She chuckled, nipped his earlobe and sent his blood pressure through the roof. " 'Xactly. You know what I'd dream about you? I'll tell you. You'd find me. I'd be on the cliffs or in my room or in the forest, and you'd find me. And my heart would start to pound, so hard, so fast."
She took his hand, pressed it against her heart. To show him. "I couldn't move or breathe, or even think," she continued, and her hand laid over his on her breast. "You'd come toward me, not saying anything, just looking at me, looking until my knees were weak, until the blood was rushing in my head. You'd kiss me, so rough, so hot. The way no one else ever would. No one else would dare to touch me the way you touched me."
"No." It was like drowning, he thought. Staring into those deep gray eyes was like drowning. "No one would."
"You'd rip my clothes, rip them off, and take me right there, wherever we were. Just the way you did that night, just like in my dreams. I must have always known you would one day."
She circled away, arms lifted like a dancer on point while he stood where he was, aching. Viciously aching.
"That's my secret. I dreamed of you. Oh, my head's spinning." She laughed, pressed a hand to it. "Being drunk feels just like it feels having you on top of me, inside me, pounding in me. God, God, I love it."
She combed her hair back from her face, grinned at him. "Look at you, standing there, watching me. Never expected to hear such talk from Laura Templeton, did you?"
He knew, standing there, watching her, that if he'd been dying of thirst he would have begged for her rather than a single sip of water. "No. And if you don't remember this in the morning, I'm going to be damn sorry."
"I'm just full of surprises tonight." She lifted her arms, hooked them behind her head and stretched. "I watched all those movies, drank all that wine. Ate chocolate and laughed. And cried, and sighed. All those things women do."
Laura lowered her hands again and turned a slow, fluid pirouette that made his shirt flow up, out.
"I watched Margo talk Annie into having her nails painted, and Kate dozing off with her head on my mother's lap. Margo nursing the baby when he woke. I loved it all so much, loved being with them. My life is them and my babies, but through it all, you were in the back of my mind. Where is Michael? Does he still want me? And I thought, we'll see. I'll be there when he comes home, and we'll see if he does. If I can make him want me. Do you?"
He didn't speak, couldn't have. Simply crossed to her, dragged her against him and plundered. Joy and need and pleasure burst through her in one sizzling ball of heat. Her laugh was smoke, like her eyes as he pulled her to the floor.
"No, no." Giddy now, and brave enough, she rolled on top of him. "Let me. This time. I want to see if I can."
He was ripe to explode and pulled her down again. "Laura, for Christ's sake—"
"Me." She jerked back, shook her reeling head. "I want to do things to you, things that might be considered inappropriate for a woman of my station."
He struggled to clamp down on hurry when she straddled him. "Want to use me, do you?"
Her lips quirked at the gleam in his eyes. "That's right. Look, we scared Bongo. He's curled up in the corner."
"He'll get over it. What do you want to do to me?"
"I have to figure it out." She blew out a breath, toyed with the buttons of his shirt. "I've got another secret."
"If it's anything like the last one, it'll probably kill me."
"It's not a good one." Now her lips pouted. "Well, maybe since it turned out this way it is. Peter never ripped my clothes off."
"Christ. Forget it, and him."
But when he reached up, she evaded him. "I want to tell you so you'll know. It's kind of funny, really. We always had very appropriate sex. Not like with you." She traced the vee above the button with a fingertip. "Always proper sex, except when we didn't have sex at all which was most of the time and all through the last year we were married. And you know what?" She placed her hands on either side of his head and leaned down, a heavy-eyed, more-than-tipsy woman.
"What?"
She hummed in her throat as he stroked her breasts. "You can do that," she murmured. "I don't mind at all. But I was saying. We had a system. No, he had a system, I was just there. He would put on classical music. Chopin, always the same sonata. I sometimes still get a tick in my eye when I hear it. He would close the door, lock it, lest a wandering servant be shocked by the goings-on, though the staff would hardly have business in there at ten forty-five in the evening. It was mostly always at ten forty-five."
"So he was a creature of habit." Michael flipped open buttons and found her flesh.
"Umm. No, you don't." She sat up again. "You're trying to distract me. He would turn off the lights, get into bed. He would kiss me three times. Not two, not four, but three times. Then he would—''
"I don't think I want a play-by-play here of Ridgeway's style in the sack."
"In the marital bed, please. Well, we'll just skip right along, then, since it isn't very interesting anyway. At eleven-oh-five, he would wish me a pleasant night and go to sleep."
"The twenty-minute special, huh?"