Double trouble (3 page)

She giddily confided their dare. To sit on Matt Minteer's lap.

Right then and there, Matt audaciously accepted the dare for her. He sat down on his chair and pulled Kayla onto his lap. There was an approving roar from Kayla's table that spread throughout the ballroom. Matt linked his arms loosely around her waist. ''Now everybody in the place knows that you're my girl," he said, his blue eyes darkening possessively.

"Woman," she corrected automatically. "It's politically incorrect to refer to females over the age of eighteen as girls." A male politician could be excoriated for that lapse; it was a lesson she immediately taught her new clients and continually stressed to the ones who had used her consulting service for a longer period of time.

"Whatever," Matt growled. At this moment, he was incapable of appreciating the benefits of her tutoring. He was too occupied with appreciating her, warm and soft and feminine on his lap.

Unable to resist, he moved one hand slowly upward to rest on her rib cage, just below the underside of her breast. With subtle fingertips, he could feel the provocative feminine swell. If she were to shift just a little, the whole soft weight of her would be in his hand. The desire to close that small distance between them—to cup and caress her breast, to take her soft ripe mouth in a kiss that was as hard and hungry as his body—was almost overwhelming.

Matt was vaguely aware that he was behaving in a manner most unlike himself. In public, he was impeccably proper in the presence of women. "You're too stiff—why won't you loosen up?" had been the constant disapproving refrain of his ex-almost-fiancee, Debra Wheeler.

Debra had been committed to spontaneous public displays of affection while his own deep natural reserve, cou-

pled with his reluctance to expose himself and his partner to the attention such behavior would elicit, kept him firmly reined in when an audience was present.

It crossed Matt's bemused mind that if Debra could see him now, holding Kristina McClure on his lap at this all-star political fest, she would think that he'd been bewitched. Or that he was drunk. But he knew that was impossible. He'd had only one beer and one glass of wine, not enough to even give him a buzz. He certainly wasn't stupid enough to get drunk on a night Uke this.

Not that he ever drank himself into a state of intoxication. His Great-Uncle Arch's prodigious capacity for drink was known to every member of the family along with old Uncle Arch's well-documented trips to the hospital emergency room for injuries acquired in falls from bar stools, fistfights and a host of accidents. With an example like that, there were no hard drinkers among the younger generation of Minteers.

So if he wasn't drunk, did that mean he was bewitched? "I think you've cast some kind of a spell on me." Matt spoke his thoughts aloud as he gazed into Kay la's limpid hazel eyes.

Turning slightly, she laid her hands on his chest, feeling the muscular strength of him. She was achingly aware of his virile pulsing, a vital force that made a syrupy warmth flow through her veins like hot honey.

'*I was thinking the same thing about you," she said softly. ''I've never felt this way before. Not about anybody. And I—I'm not usually this frank, either," she felt obliged to confess. ''Disclosure is normally such a risk but with you I feel I can say anything, whatever I'm thinking, and not worry about all those male-female games of strategy." With Matt Minteer, love wasn't a risky chance, it was a sure thing.

Matt groaned. Her sweet confession marked the end of his self-restraint. It was just too much to fight his own in-

stincts, his own needs. The iron self-control that had been both his blessing and his curse, dissolved. He wanted this woman more than he could ever remember wanting anyone, even Debra. He wanted to kiss her, to touch her, to brand her as his. The presence of hundreds of people was, amazingly, no deterrent at all.

Matt lowered his head to hers. Kay la watched him, her eyes smoldering with a hunger she didn't think to hide. He was going to kiss her and she wanted him to, desperately. What did it matter that they were at the head table in the hotel ballroom with the party's political elite, a gaggle of lobbyists and members of the media as eyewitnesses? She and Matt were in love, and as that old song went "Everybody Loves a Lover." In fact, somebody had tried to sing a rendition of that very song tonight.

''Senator Minteer!" The sharp nasal voice of the waiter pierced the intensely private moment, leaving both Matt and Kayla oddly disoriented. "Sir, do you dig the planet Earth?"

Already badly jarred by the untimely interruption, Matt could only gape and mutter, "Huh?" Kayla was too dazed to say a word.

"There is a way to supply energy naturally, without polluting our mother planet " the waiter continued. His.

voice seemed to be fading in and out. But he was definitely ' talking about—

''Windmills?" Kayla repeated incredulously. The room was starting to spin again. Or maybe she was the one who was spinning, whirling by lights and tables filled with loud, laughing people. "I—I'm starting to feel as if I'm on a windmill, going around and around." She stared at Matt in confusion.

"It's all right, sweetheart," he soothed, standing up and taking her hand. "It's getting too hot m here. There are too many people and not enough air. Let's get out of here."

She and Matt left the ballroom hand in hand and were approached by a uniformed bellboy as they headed toward the lobby. 'Tollow me, please," he said.

Kayla and Matt exchanged conspiratorial grins, pleased that this perceptive young man was aiding their escape. They followed him along a quiet carpeted corridor, pausing to steal quick, hungry kisses along the way. The bellboy waited patiently, motioning them onward with a polite, ''ITiis way, please."

They trailed after him, stopping when he did, in front of a door. "Here's the room," the bellboy said and opened the door.

''Oh, the room," Kayla repeated, stepping inside. It was very dark. She heard a quiet, ''Good night," and then the door closed behind her, blocking out the light from the hall. Now it was pitch-black.

"I can't see a thing," Kayla said. "I have my hand right in front of my face and I can't even see it." She heard someone giggle and realized with astonishment, that it was herself. She was as confused by the sound as she was by the total darkness. Heavens, she never giggled!

"Where are we?" she asked, taking a step into the black void. She stumbled a little. "I could use a Seeing Eye dog," she murmured. "Could we turn on a light?"

"No." It was Matt's voice, deep and husky and whiskey-smooth. Kayla sensed his presence behind her. "If this is a dream, it's the best one I've ever had in my life and I don't want to wake up. Come here, sweetheart."

He reached for her, found her a few steps ahead of him and cupped his hands around her shoulders. The feel of her, her softness and her scent, went to his head like hundred-proof whiskey. His mind was reeling; his body, already taut with arousal, hardened to a level of pleasure so intense it bordered on pain.

He wasn't sure if he'd turned her around or if she had done so herself. Now, however, she was facing him, her

body touching his, the warm thrust of her breasts against his chest, her thighs brushing his. He couldn't see her, but he could touch her and smell her perfume, a sultry scent that stirred him deeply. He could hear the soft quick breaths she took and knew that she was as aroused as he was.

"You're my dream girl," he whispered. His lips brushed the top of her head. Her hair was silky and smooth and smelled and felt wonderful. "I mean, my dream woman," Matt corrected himself, chuckling softly.

"Very good, you remembered," Kay la said with a light little laugh of her own. It was natural and easy and right for her to nestle closer to him. She felt so emotionally attuned to him, that being physically close to him was a necessary and natural extension of this mystical meeting of their minds.

"But I'm not a dream," she added softly. "I'm as real as you are." As real as the trembhng in her limbs and the searing, liquid heat deep in the most secret part of her. Needs and emotions that she'd long kept locked up inside her came burgeoning to life.

As if of their own volition, her arms twined around his neck, pressing her even closer to him. It seemed impossible to remain still in his embrace and she squirmed and wriggled sensuously against him. Matt moaned and gripped her bottom, lifting her higher and harder against him.

She was clinging to him, her head spinning, as he whispered incoherent words of love, sexy words of passion, into her ear. The dark seductive intimacy was intensely potent, yet that same odd aura of unreality that she'd experienced earlier once again enveloped her.

"Maybe this a dream," Kayla mused bewilderedly. "But how can we both be having the same dream? Or are we? Am I dreaming this or are you?" The concept seemed imponderable. "You must be in my dream because if I were in yours, I—"

'*I just know that I want you desperately," Matt interrupted, his voice soft and low and urgent against her ear. He was beyond esoteric discussions. Both thinking and talking required powers of concentration that he did not possess at the moment. His body had taken over; he was aching for her, his forceful need obliterating all else. '*I don't care if you're real or a dream," he breathed. ''Let me have you, sweetheart."

Kayla felt his lips close around the sensitive lobe of her ear, felt the exquisitely light bite of his teeth. His body was hard against her, his rousing male need unmistakable. She clasped him to her, arching into him.

'*Yes, darling," she heard herself say in a hungry, sexy voice she had never heard herself use. She'd never called a man darling before, either, but it came naturally tonight. Matt was her darling, the man she had been waiting for all these years. She'd known it from the moment she had gazed into those gorgeous blue eyes of his, and everything that was happening between them now confirmed her initial instincts.

Matt's mouth took hers in a deep, wild kiss that grew progressively deeper and wilder. His tongue penetrated the sweet moist cavern of her mouth, probing and stroking and claiming it in a possessive display of pure male mastery. Kayla responded ardently, making claims of her own, as passion built and grew within her.

Unable to stop himself. Matt sHpped his hand inside her jacket and covered her breast with his palm. Even through the silky layers of her blouse and lingerie, he could feel the tight, aroused nipple. His fingers traced the shape of it and sensuously, lightly tweaked it.

Kayla felt a spasm of fire sear her. A breathy little moan escaped from her throat. Her hands trembling, she pulled off her suit jacket, then reached blindly for his. It was so dark in the room, the blackness lending a surrealistic ele-

ment to what seemed to be a combination of a fantasy and a dreamy fulfillment of a long-anticipated destiny.

They tugged and pulled at their own clothes, at each other's, discarding garments at a furious clip, pausing for hotly intimate kisses and caresses that grew bolder and more demanding with every stroke.

And then they were lying down. Somehow, despite the lack of hght and their unfamiliarity with the room, they had moved instinctively to the bed. Kay la was vaguely aware that she was naked, that Matt was naked, too. The rough material of the bedspread felt sensuously abrasive against her bare skin, another stimulant to her already overloaded senses.

"I want to look at you, I want to see you," Matt breathed with a harsh moan, but he couldn't for the life of him roll away from her to find the light that surely must be here somewhere. ''Next time," he promised, his mouth opening over her parted Ups once again.

Next time. Yes, there would be many, many of those, Kay la thought dizzily. She didn't know if her eyes were op)en or closed it was so dark, but it didn't matter anyway. She was far too absorbed in feeling his satisfying masculine weight upon her, crushing her deliciously into the mattress, making her feel small and soft and feminine.

His big hands unerringly found her breasts, warm and full and exquisitely soft. He fondled them and massaged them tenderly, tactilely learning their size and shape. "Tell me what you like," he murmured.

He wanted to pleasure her; he loved hearing her moan and sigh as he touched her with his lips, with his fingers. She was so responsive, so excitingly uninhibited, and he reveled in her open sexual honesty as much as she savored his own unreserved responses to her.

"It feels so good." Kayla sighed softly. "Everything you do to me. Matt. When you kiss me, when you touch me."

She shivered as streaks of sexual tension, of arousal and excitement, rocketed through her.

They kissed again and again, searing intimate kisses that previewed and simulated what was to come, her intensity matching his, their desire surging wildly.

The wiry mat of hair on his chest tickled her breasts, making them so ultrasensitive Kayla cried aloud when his mouth closed, hot and wet, over one beaded nipple. Clutching his head with her hands, she rolled her head back and forth against the mattress, chanting his name.

Matt suckled her with his lips while his hands glided over the supple sleekness of her skin. He was excruciatingly aware of every sensual detail about her—the breathy little cries she made, the feel of her soft abdomen against his own hair-roughened skin, the touch of her small hands trailing over him, petting him, loving him.

Kayla felt a ferocious need burning in her as her body opened to his enticing male heat, like the moist petals of a flower unfurling in the sun. Her whole body quivered as his hand stroked her thighs, up and down, back and forth, until finally moving to the vulnerable softness between. Kayla gasped as he touched her intimately, caressing her with his fingers that were provocative and bold yet so very gentle and knowing.

She felt the hard, hot thrust of his manhood against her and was achingly aware of a deep empty void inside her, an ache that she knew only he—full and pulsing and male-could truly fill. ''Now, Matt!" she pleaded. ''Love me now."

"Yes baby," he gasped, his voice slurred with passion. He surged into her as she lifted her hips to accept him, eager and ready for him.