Falling Again Read online

  How—or when—he unhooked her bra, she wasn’t sure but suddenly it was on the floor with her jacket and dress and she was left in her heels and panties. He lowered her onto the bed, then knelt by her to remove her shoes.

  It was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen, him on his knees, his eyes hot with desire, the tip of his tongue visible as he concentrated on unbuckling and unwrapping the straps on her shoes from around her ankles. She felt like Cinderella. Except, of course, Cindy was trying the shoes on, not having them taken off. And was dressed. And anticipating sex wasn’t part of it, at least not in the Disney version.

  When both shoes were off, he stood up and began to undress. He held her gaze as he shed the leather vest and white shirt he wore, revealing the most beautiful chest she’d ever seen, a testament to a well-used gym membership maybe, or toting around heavy photography equipment. All she knew was she wanted to feel the hardness against her breasts and her fingers were itching to trace the valleys between those muscles.

  After toeing off his shoes, his trousers and shorts were off. She wasn’t surprised his abs were as impressive as his chest. Not to mention his erection. Here was yet another part of him her fingers wanted to touch.

  Just before he slid under the sheet with her he opened the drawer to the bedside table and pulled out condoms. She wondered if he’d been planning this or was always prepared just in case. The thought was gone in seconds as he pulled her body against his, pressing his erection against her abdomen. They would need them. He was prepared. That’s all that mattered.

  As he rained kisses from her temple to the corner of her mouth and on to the hollow of her throat, she rocked her hips against his and was rewarded by a deep, guttural sound in his throat. Emboldened by the groan, she ran her hand down his abdomen, reaching for what she’d wanted to touch since she’d seen him strip off his boxers.

  He stopped her hand. “As good as I know it would feel, you’d better not or I’m likely to embarrass myself and neither one of us will have a very good time.” He gave her a quick kiss on the nose and a half smile as he released her hand.

  She grinned at him. “Must be what I get for fooling around with a sweet young thing.”

  He kissed the smile away, seeming to ignore what she’d said, and moved his hand tantalizingly slowly down her belly, the feel of his mouth and his hand clouding her mind, increasing the need to have him touch her in the most sensitive place on her body, where she was aching to feel him.

  And then he was there, circling her clitoris with his thumb while he gently, carefully used first one, then two fingers to massage inside her. It took very little time to bring her to the brink of exploding, her body arching against him. It took just a few more strokes of his thumb and she climaxed in an orgasm, surprising her with its speed and intensity, as well as surprising her with the skill of the man who gave it to her.

  • • •

  He wasn’t sure he could hold on much longer, he wanted to be inside her so badly. She was everything he wanted in bed with a woman and more—sexy, responsive, passionate—and she was wet and ready for him. God knows he was ready for her. But he wanted to savor every minute of what he was sure—based on her powerful orgasm—would be mind-blowing sex with one of the most beautiful women he’d ever known. Most importantly, though, he wanted to make sure she had gotten all the pleasure he could give her this first time. He didn’t want to disappoint her any more than she wanted to disappoint him.

  After her orgasm he returned his attention to her mouth, her sweet, sweet mouth, nipping at her lips, licking the lusciousness of her. When he felt her press her body against his, heard the soft sounds she made at the back of her throat, he knew he wanted to hear those sounds again and again. Wanted to be the man who made her moan and ache for his kiss. Tonight. As many nights as she’d let him.

  Wanted to have his mouth and his hands on her breasts where he circled first one nipple, then the other with his tongue, bringing them to hard little peaks, suckling, massaging, eliciting yet more sexy sounds from her. She shifted restlessly against him and he knew he had only a modicum of control left before he would have to be inside her; have to explode inside her.

  Before he could reach for the condom, she grabbed it, tore open the packet and held it up to him, as if asking “You or me?” He pulled back and let her roll it down over his aching, throbbing penis, his control now on a ragged edge. When she was finished, she tugged at him until he was back between her legs. Slowly he entered her, feeling her tight, hot core stretch, expand to accommodate him, then close around him so they fit together. Kissing his way up her chest to her mouth, he used his tongue to taste her again. And again. And again.

  It didn’t take long for her to climax a second time. This time, he followed.

  They lay tangled together as he tried to bring his breathing back to something close to normal. Eventually, he had to leave to get rid of the condom but on his return, he pulled her into his arms and said, “Okay, ‘sweet young thing.’ What the hell was that about?”

  She took his hand and kissed it but didn’t meet his gaze. “I shouldn’t have said it. I’m sorry. But I know you’re a lot younger than I am. I got carried away. I guess I’m enjoying some sort of fantasy thing.”

  “I appreciate being your fantasy, but why do you think you’re so much older than I am?”

  “I know how old Amanda is and she’s always said you were her baby brother, by a lot of years. So I’m guessing maybe you’re twenty-two, twenty-three. Much younger than I am.”

  “So, you think I’m only a year or so past my last outbreak of acne and you’re an ancient old lady who’s, what, my grandmother’s age?”

  Suppressing a smile, she shook her head. “No, not really, I’m thirty-two.”

  “I majored in journalism, not math, but even so, I’ll be twenty-eight next month, which, if my math is correct, means you’re only four years older than I am. Amanda exaggerates so she can boss me around.”

  “You’ve made me feel less like I’m robbing the cradle. Thanks.”

  He untangled his legs from hers and backed far enough away to give him the space to look directly in her eyes. “Even if I were as young as you thought, what’s the big deal? It’s nothing more than a number.” He traced her mouth with his forefinger again. “Just a number, Fee.” She sucked on his finger, kissed the inside of his wrist. He ducked his head and returned to her breasts, tugging gently at her nipples with his teeth and lips, pulling them, one at a time, into erect points. “All that matters is this.”

  “Oh, Nick.” She groaned.

  “You like that? How about this?” He moved down her body, kissing his way around her navel until he reached her sex. She raised her hips to him so he could make love to her with his mouth, flicking his tongue across the spot between her legs where all her attention was concentrated.

  When she moaned and gasped, he kissed his way back up her body and turned her onto her side, facing him. He pulled her leg up over his hip so he was nudging against her sex. He was already hard again and he had another condom ready to put on.

  “Oh, my,” she murmured. “You’re…”

  “Not a sweet young thing, but I’m not old either.” With his mouth on hers and his hands everywhere on her body he wanted to go, she was better than any fantasy he’d had about what it would be like. And he loved it.

  He took his time, paying slow and careful attention to her mouth and her breasts, her arms, every inch of her body, bringing her along, stopping to kiss her, to nibble at her neck. When he thought she could bear it no longer, he put on the condom, brought her leg up higher to hook onto his back and with one thrust was deep inside her.

  He tipped up her chin, then touched her eyes, one at a time. “Look at me, Fiona,” he whispered. “I want to see your eyes when you come this time.”

  She opened her eyes and he saw.

  Afterward, he thought she’d dozed off so he slowly, carefully edged away from her, intending to head for the bathroom again. But she
wasn’t really asleep. She started, her eyes flying open, looking surprised. She ran her hand lightly down his back and said, “Is everything okay?”

  “Everything’s fine. I was looking to see if there was another condom out because, you know, since you’re messing around with a sweet young thing, we might need it.”

  “If I officially apologize, will you forget what I said?”

  He laughed and drew her into his arms. “I’m never letting you forget.”

  “If we put the condom to use in the next half hour, will you at least not mention it again tonight?”

  “Yes, if you’ll put the shades up on your eyes. A little while ago, I saw a woman I want to see again. She was willing to be vulnerable, she’s passionate…”

  Fiona put her hand over his mouth and didn’t say anything. What he saw on her face said she was as overwhelmed by what he said as by the physical sensations they’d both just experienced. Maybe even, he thought, overwhelmed enough to be afraid.

  Trying to comfort her, he kissed her fingers and took her hand from his lips. “Fiona, I…”

  “Sh-sh-sh. Don’t say it.”

  “How do you know what I’m going to say?”

  “We both know what you’re going to say. It’s what men say to women when they’ve just had sex with them. Don’t insult me. Just leave it the way it is. No expectations. No demands. Not from me. I’ve been there and done that and I don’t need any more T-shirts from the experience.”

  “I think you’re wrong. And am I so easy to brush off?”

  “I can’t imagine any woman brushing you off, me included. I’m just…well, just letting you know you don’t have to play the game with me, I guess.” She nestled into his arms. “Can we talk in the morning? I think this conversation would be better in the daylight and out of bed.”

  Chapter 5

  She woke with a start, her face pressed into a pillow with an unfamiliar smell. Where…?

  Then she remembered.

  She was in Nick’s bed. Where she’d spent the night. A night full of the best sex she’d ever had with a man who knew exactly what to do with his mouth, his hands, and every other pertinent part of his body. Dear God, he was good.

  But now, like the worst cliché, in the full daylight of the morning after, she was wondering if she’d made the biggest mistake of her life. So, he was only a few years younger than she was. There were other complications. He lived three thousand miles away from Portland—when he was in country, which wasn’t very often. He had an ego she realized—now that she’d seen more of his work—he was apparently entitled to but which was capable of swamping her, she was sure. And he was still her friend’s brother. How do you have a roll in the hay with your friend’s baby brother and face her when you get home? What the hell had she been thinking?

  She pushed the covers back and sat up, trying to be as careful as possible so she didn’t wake him. Maybe she could just sneak out, leave him a note or something, return to her hotel, think about it when the temptation to put her arms around him and hold him wasn’t so close.

  “Good morning, beautiful. Did you sleep well?” Nick ran his hand down her back.

  Okay, so sneaking away wasn’t going to work. “I did. You have a comfortable bed.”

  He touched the small of her back. “How did I miss this last night? You have a Celtic cross tattoo.”

  Grateful for the change of subject, she said, “I was in a bad place awhile back and decided I needed to do something outrageous. A tattoo may not have been the best choice, but it was better than the other things I considered—entering a convent, extended drug use, changing my name, leaving the country.”

  “I like it.”

  “Thanks. It’s my private little rebellion. No one else knows it’s there.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Really? Is there a reason you’ve kept it secret?”

  “I’m sure there is but not one I’ve given much thought to.”

  He pulled her back into bed. “So, you and your secret tattoo slept well?”

  “We did.”

  “Right. Because of my comfortable mattress.” He was grinning at her.

  The blush she could feel flushing over her face and neck made it impossible to lie. “Well, your bed was part of the reason.”

  Lacing his fingers through hers, he began to tug her closer to him, kissing up her arm between words. “How about we replay some of the other parts of the reason?”

  She shook off his hand. “I think I should go to my hotel, Nick. You must have things you need to do today.”

  “You know I have the weekend free. And you can’t check into your hotel until four.” He frowned at her, seriously, this time. “Are you okay? Did I do something wrong? Or was it not good for you last night?”

  “Oh, dear God, no. Last night was wonderful. It was…I don’t even know a word good enough to describe it. But I’m not sure we should make too much out of one night.”

  “How ’bout we extend the night we’re not making too much out of to a night and a whole Sunday? Stay and have breakfast—in a while—and then spend the day with me. We can, I don’t know, go someplace you haven’t been in Washington. One of the Smithsonians. The zoo. Go look at the Constitution. Or how about The Spy Museum? The Freer? The Corcoran? The Sackler?”

  By the time he got through his list, she was laughing. “Okay, one more day. And how about the Newseum? I haven’t been there in forever.”

  “Might have guessed it would be your choice. But first things first.” He wouldn’t let her avoid his arms and his mouth this time, but then she didn’t really try.

  • • •

  On the plane ride home three days later she tried to work out if her time with Nick was just a vacation thing or something else. In addition to the two dinners they’d had before she went to the wedding and the weekend they’d mostly spent together, they’d seen each other every day until the morning she left. They’d found a thousand things to talk about—family, politics, books, movies, plays, art, the world—and the sex had been amazing. But she had absolutely no idea what it meant. Maybe it was, on her part, merely a need to be held after almost two years of self-inflicted solitude and on his, a willingness to be the one who held her. She didn’t know.

  She’d play it by ear. Or forget about it. Which, given how much she’d enjoyed being with him both in and out of bed, seemed difficult to imagine doing. But she could try. She’d just settle back into her normal life and see what happened.

  Oh, and she’d avoid any conversation with her friend Amanda in which the words “sex” and “baby brother” appeared.

  • • •

  Fiona lived in St. Johns, a neighborhood north of downtown Portland where the graceful St. Johns Bridge crossed the Willamette River. Local legend, which she’d learned long ago wasn’t true, claimed the cable suspension bridge, the longest of its kind in the world when it was built, had been the prototype for the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. No matter how often the legend was debunked, Oregonians persisted in spreading the rumor. Mostly, Fiona believed, to annoy San Franciscans.

  The St. Johns Bridge story was part of a two-pronged attack on Baghdad by the Bay. The other prong involved the original plat map for the city. It had been filed in what was then the appropriate territorial office—Oregon City, Oregon—where it remained to this day, in spite of San Francisco’s best efforts to get it back. It was like the Greeks trying to get the Elgin Marbles back from the British Museum but on a much smaller scale.

  The cozy Craftsman-style house where Fiona had lived for nine years had been lovingly restored by her landlord. Hardwood floors had been refinished and the built-in bookcases, sideboard, and china cabinet for which the homes were known polished to a high shine. The original stained glass panels over the windows in the dining room and entryway, having been cleaned and restored, glowed when the sun was right.

  Over the years, Fiona had acquired a few pieces of reproduction Stickley furniture to go with the style of the house. Her living
room had a couch, a rocker, and a leather lounge chair in the distinctive style as well as a coffee table. A set of not so distinctively styled shelves held her prized collection of vinyl records and a turntable. In her dining room was a table and chairs for six, in the kitchen, a small breakfast table and two chairs. She slept in one of the two bedrooms and used the other as a guest room and home office after losing her roommate to the nation’s capital. Actually, it was less a home office than it was a refuge for Pulitzer, her orange marmalade cat.

  She loved the house, loved her neighborhood, loved everything about her life. Except, of course, when she couldn’t get a handle on a story she was chasing. Which was where she was on the white power story; she told her managing news editor, Ben Stern, when she got back to her desk after her trip.

  He commiserated with her but said she needed to let it go for the moment and get the piece on the Anderbock bill written and then finish a piece on earthquakes she’d started researching before she left, because it had been moved up as the cover story for next week.

  He also asked her to look into a new non-profit foundation. The Green Machine—an over-cutesy name she thought—financed by Duke Wellington and Sherman Bischler, purported to provide seed money for start-up businesses in the field of green energy. Her boss wanted to know if there was a connection—or a contradiction—between the foundation and the Anderbock bill.

  Secretly delighted because interviewing the two men might give her a way to keep her investigation into the white power story going, she made the calls to ask for interviews with them.

  Text messages from Nick continued for a few days after she returned to Portland, then stopped. No surprise, really. She knew he was on another assignment and assumed their time in Washington together was a vacation fling to him, nothing more. After all, she’d decided that’s what it was. Why wouldn’t he? If she just remembered to think of it that way, it would be better for all concerned.