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  He squirmed beneath her, trying to adjust his straining cock without her noticing, and she shifted easily, so that he was pressing between her silk-covered thighs, and even thinking of the word “thighs” was getting to him. He started in on the laundry list of cuss words once more, when she pushed against him, sitting up and looking at him. “You won’t believe me,” she said, sounding more resigned than hurt. “You’ll never believe me.”

  For some reason the old taxi driver’s words came into his head. Sometimes it’s better to believe. If he thought that had anything to do with Mollie’s fantasy world, then he was as crazy as she was.

  Her adorable raccoon eyes were serious as she looked at him, and no matter what the truth was, she believed her own tall tales. Better to believe, he thought, cradling her face in his big, rough hands, smoothing away the tears and makeup with his thumbs. He shook his head slowly, knowing he was going to do this, begging for something, anything to stop him from screwing her on a battered old sofa in a deserted department store.

  “I wish I could think of somewhere to take you,” he said softly, letting his thumb brush against her mouth.

  “Take me here.” It was simple, it was direct. And so he did.

  Chapter 17

  Johnny was looking at her as she’d always wanted him to look at her, beneath his grumpiness and cynical attitude. His blue eyes were dark in the city-lit room, but the need there was more than wishful thinking, and Mollie had given up fighting it. She was lost, remote, rudderless, and he was her anchor. Tonight, she needed that anchor with an aching urgency—she wanted his hands on her, his mouth on her, she needed the unshakable intimacy of sex. It didn’t matter if it was lousy–sex was comforting, and that was what she needed. Comfort.

  He shook his head slowly, and panic hit her. Was he saying no? She was throwing herself at him. Damn it, she’d get down on her knees and beg him, if she had to. She needed to feel real, to feel grounded. To feel him.

  Before she could say anything, he spoke, his voice low, deep, impossibly arousing. “There are two kinds of men in this world, Mollie. The decent kind, the ones who don’t take advantage of someone who’s lost and sick and in trouble. And then there are the bastards.” He slid his long fingers through her hair, and the touch was exquisite. “And we both know I’m a bastard.” Slowly, slowly he brought her face down to his, and the first touch of his lips was of such sweetness that she wanted to cry.

  He kissed her eyelids, her cheekbones, her jaw, her mouth...soft, clinging little kisses, and she realized she was shaking. She could do better than this, she told herself, but the trembling was getting worse, and her self-control was eroding. What if she started blubbering? She needed to take charge as she always did; then some of this needy panic might slip away. She could tell him what to do; if she could get pleasure out of a wand of silicone, then she could get pleasure out of him, as long as he did exactly what she wanted.

  She tried to pull back, but his hands had slid down from cradling her face to simply holding her still, and his blazing eyes held a question. “Change your mind?” he said softly.

  She didn’t have to ask him if he meant it—she knew the answer instinctively. Yes, he’d let her change her mind, even if he was halfway inside her, he’d let her go. She had that much trust, even if that was as far as it went.

  She summoned her most practical voice, which would have been great if she hadn’t started with a raw sort of squeak she could only attribute to her crying jag. “I was going to take off my clothes. That is...we’re doing this, right?”

  For a moment, he didn’t say a word. And then there it was, one word. “Riiiiight,” he said, drawing out the syllable, but his hands were holding her biceps, keeping her in place.

  She should squirm, get him to release her so she could get on with the business at hand, but for some reason, she didn’t, she just sort of lay against him, looking into his eyes as if they’d provide some sort of answer. He was iron-hard beneath her, and she could count that as a small...no, a very big...triumph. You could lead a man around by the dick—that pretty much summed up her sexual experience.

  But then he released her arm, sliding his hand up, under the dinner jacket he’d wrapped her in, and pushed it off her shoulders, down her arms. For a moment it trapped her, halfway down, her arms at her sides, and her startled gaze met his again, as he shoved it the rest of the way, releasing her long enough to pull it off her and toss it onto the floor.

  She was getting uneasy, and she needed to take control again. “That’s an expensive jacket to treat like that,” she scolded. “You should...”

  What he should do vanished when he kissed her again, and for a moment, she simply dissolved into the kiss, the taste of him, the feel and the power. The gentleman had vanished, the decent guy he’d insisted he wasn’t, and it was the bastard, the hungry, impossibly sexy bastard who was kissing her with such fierce determination. All she wanted to do was melt all over him, their skin touching everywhere, joining, lost in his body and hers. It wasn’t until the air touched her skin that she realized that he was pulling her dress down, uncovering her breasts, and her unexpected vulnerability came crashing back in. Once more, she pulled back, resisting, but just barely, the urge to yank the dress up to her neck. She needed space, she needed to make things clear, and she pulled away from him, from the big old couch, managing to stand a few feet away, just out of his reach.

  Her feet hurt, and she glanced down at them, at the shredded silk, the ruined silver sandals, and she managed to kick them off without having to unbuckle the tiny rhinestone buckles. Johnny hadn’t moved during all this—he was still half-reclining on the couch, perfectly at ease, watching her out of enigmatic eyes.

  His white shirt was wet from the snow, just as his dark blond hair was, but his body had felt so hot against hers, she was surprised it hadn’t dried. “You should take off your clothes,” she said, trying to sound practical and failing. “I’ll take care of mine, and then we can do it.”

  He raised an eyebrow. Damn, 1940s people with their eyebrows! “Anything else?” he said mildly.

  Some of her panic began to fade. She knew how to do this—the zipless fuck immortalized in that old women’s novel she’d stolen from her mother and read under the covers with a dying flashlight. Encouraged, she continued. “I like to be on top. Steady thrusting is best, but don’t go on too long or it gets uncomfortable. Don’t even think of going down on me—it’s a waste of time. It never turns me on. My breasts aren’t particularly sensitive either. And I don’t do blow jobs, so get over it. I hate endearments. You can call me a slut or something like that if you need it to stay hard, but don’t call me darling, or baby, or sweetheart. I won’t like it.”

  He was staring at her with utter fascination, but her laundry list hadn’t had any noticeable effect on the ridge of steel beneath his dress pants. So far, so good.

  “And afterward, I need privacy to clean up and process things,” she added.

  “Process?”

  There were times when seventy years felt like a millennium. “Process,” she repeated patiently. “Put things in perspective.”

  “Rate it on a scale from one to ten?”

  She looked at him suspiciously, but he seemed merely interested in her instructions. Encouraged, she continued. “I need a certain amount of foreplay to get wet or it’s uncomfortable for both of us, but it’s usually three to five minutes, tops. If I’m not wet by then, we might as well just do it. I have lubricant at my apartment, but since it hasn’t even been built yet, there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  He nodded, presumably meaning that he understood her instructions, and another layer of anxiety left her. The burning fire in her blood had cooled, that crazy, out-of-control feeling had ebbed, and she thanked God she was pulling herself together. “Anything else?” he said pleasantly.

  She frowned, thinking hard. “I don’t think so. Oh, yes. I prefer to undress myself, as I mentioned, and I have a hard time relaxing if things aren’
t folded and put away. I don’t expect you’ll have a problem with any of this—men of the 1940s and ’50s are very conventional and unimaginative, so this should feel normal.”

  “How many men from the 1940s and 1950s have you known?”

  There was nothing alarming in his voice, so she answered him honestly. “Well, you,” she admitted. “But I’ve heard stories about my grandparents’ generation that backs it up.”

  “And you get to decide what we can and can’t do?” It was a loaded question, but he didn’t seem disturbed. Or discouraged, she thought with a mixture of regret and...she wasn’t quite sure what her complicated emotions were telling her.

  “If you want to fuck me, then yes.” There was just a trace of belligerence in her voice, grimly phrasing it as plainly as possible, clearly daring him.

  “And apparently I’m old enough to be your grandfather. You have a thing for older men? For that matter, do you even like men at all?”

  He wasn’t giving her any attitude, he just seemed curious, and she felt secure enough to answer him truthfully. “Not much,” she confessed. “That doesn’t mean I like women—I tried and it just didn’t click, so men are the only game in town. And in my time, you’d probably be dead.”

  “That’s comforting.” He was watching her calmly enough, but she knew his mind was working, turning her instructions over in his mind. Or maybe he wasn’t thinking at all, just waiting until he could get inside her. Her experience told her that men didn’t have a whole lot of intellectual capacity when they were hard—wasn’t it Robin Williams who said God gave men two heads and only enough blood to operate one at a time?

  But Johnny didn’t look like his brain had taken a vacation, and Mollie suddenly had the very sure feeling that she wasn’t really in control at all. While his attention was on her face, her slinky gown was drooping dangerously, and she quickly started to pull it up, trying to remember if she had any other rules, when he simply reached out and hauled her back onto the sofa, and she was beneath him, his arms around her, his narrow hips between her thighs, stretching the silk, and that impressive erection was right where she wanted it, and oh, yes, she’d almost forgotten the most important thing of all.

  “One more thing,” she said breathlessly, concentrating on her thoughts and not her vulnerable position. “I only come if you rub my clitoris—I think the G spot is a myth.” A terrible thought struck her. “Oh, God, do you even know what a clitoris is?”

  His grin was slow, unhurried, and that restless, hungry feeling was sneaking back, and her hands were shaking. “I know what a clitoris is. I have no idea what a G spot is, but perhaps you could fill me in. You seem to have a plan—I wouldn’t want to disrupt it.”

  His words were spoken without inflection, and he was looking serious, but she didn’t trust him, damn it. And if she didn’t trust him, she had to get away from him, out from under, ignoring the way her body was crying for him. “Maybe this isn’t a good idea after all,” she said nervously, trying to move. He was so big she was absolutely immobilized beneath him, but the sensation was strange. Instead of feeling trapped, she felt...safe, wrapped up, protected.

  He didn’t say a word, he simply nuzzled against the side of her face, and her nipples tightened almost painfully, her soft moan shocking her. “So let me tell you what we’re going to do,” he whispered in her ear. “I’m going to undress you. Sweetheart,” he added deliberately, punctuating the word with a bump of his hips against her, and arousal spiked through her—she was back in that restless, anxious longing and uncontrolled, confused need. “And I’m going to dump our clothes on the floor and walk all over them if I want. I’m going to touch you, taste you, anywhere I damned please. You can be on top, but you’re going to be beneath me, in front of me, standing, sitting, any position we can think of. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do, but you’re going to want to do everything.” His voice was soft, his words terrifyingly erotic, and she closed her eyes, lost in it, lost in him. “Yes?”

  It was a question she couldn’t answer, swept away by the crazy sensations racketing through her body. Danger, Will Robinson! She wanted to run, she wanted...she wanted...

  “Yes,” she said.

  His hands were big, strong, warm, and he slid them up her body, reaching the loose straps of the dress, pulling the drooping material down to her waist, and then he was silent, unmoving. She opened her eyes to see him staring down at her breasts.

  “Jesus Christ,” he breathed. “I thought that damned dress was going to kill me, but your body...”

  “My breasts are too small,” she protested.

  He laughed. “Your breasts are perfect. You’re perfect. We’ve fought this long enough.”

  “I’m not done fighting,” she said in a small voice.

  “Yes, you are.”

  She would have argued, but he’d begun to pull the dress down, lifting off her enough to pull it off and toss the priceless thing onto the floor, so that she was only wearing something Rosa had called tap pants, a lacy garter belt and tattered silk stockings.

  He would have had no trouble with a bra; he dispensed with the garter belt effortlessly, and she thought of his clever hands, touching her, and a shiver of fresh need ran through her. Her arms had been trapped beneath him, but now she could move, now she could push him away, make him wait, make him stop, make him...

  She slid her arms around his neck and pulled him back, kissing him with all the need burning inside her, surrendering her body, her mouth, her soul. She wanted to disappear into him, his skin, she wanted to dissolve in pleasure, and he was right, she was done with fighting.

  He reached up and took her arms, pulling them away from him very gently as he sat back, kneeling between her legs, and he began to unbutton the dress shirt, tossing the studs onto the floor. She’d probably step on them in her bare feet, but she didn’t give a damn, simply leaning forward and ripping the rest of the white linen open and oh, God, he was beautiful. Of course, he was, all planes and angles and golden skin, strength in his defined muscles that bunched and moved as he stripped off the shirt and threw it on the floor. Nothing underneath, just that skin, and then he reached for his belt.

  He wasn’t going to have everything his way. She put her hands on his, moving them out of the way as she attacked his old-fashioned buckle. The clasp was different, and her hands were shaking, but he made no effort to help her, merely sat back and let her fumble with it, until frustration overwhelmed her, and she cursed, yanking at it.

  He laughed again, taking her fingers in his. “This way,” he said, and the belt snapped open. She pulled it free with more haste than care, and then reached for the zipper on his pants.

  There was no zipper, just a row of small buttons, and she wanted to cry with frustration. Didn’t they have fucking zippers back in the ’40s? The buttons were tight over the ridge of his cock, and too small, but he simply flipped them open with a casual gesture, shoving his pants and shorts down, and he was so damned big she froze.

  He was reading her mind. “Don’t worry,” he said with that same, amused, tolerant voice. “It’ll fit.”

  “You are so damned smug.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I am. And I know what I’m doing. You’re going to trust me, just this once, to take care of you. Lie back and think of England.”

  “I told you...”

  “I know what you told me. How’s that been working for you? Don’t answer—you don’t need to. For once in your life, you’re going to let go and let me take care of things, and you’re never going to be the same. And no, I’m not going to fuck you. Baby,” he added. “We’ll do that some other time.”

  Her eyes flew open, looking up at him, burning with unexpected heat. He couldn’t be serious, he couldn’t be planning to walk away...

  “Don’t look so panicked. I’m not going to fuck you, hard, the way I want to, I’m going to make love to you, slow, sweet, until you come so hard you’ll never come back to earth, and then we’ll do it a
gain, and then you can be on top, and you can tie me up if you need to, but there’s no escape. Baby,” he said again. “Last chance. Now, or never. No takesies, no backsies.”

  “No what?”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes,” she said, lying back on the sofa and closing her eyes. “And don’t call me baby.”

  He laughed, looming over her, and his hand slid between her legs, through the wide opening of the tap pants, his fingers sliding through her folds. “And you’re already wet. Baby.”

  That made her eyes fly open, but he was pulling the panties down her legs, past the torn silk stockings, and tossing them away, and in the shadowy darkness she could see a glint in his eyes. “And that’s too delicious to resist,” he added, and put his mouth between her legs, his tongue licking.

  She shrieked, grabbing his hair, but he ignored her efforts, and she wanted to drum her feet in frustration. This never worked, but he hadn’t listened, and it was his fault...but she could feel his tongue, his teeth, feel the thrust of him, the suck, the liquid heat flowing between them, and it seemed as if her body was melting into the cushions as sensations began to flow over her, warm and soft and gooey.

  What the hell? She tried to resist, tried to find her usual unresponsiveness, but her body was having other ideas, and why the hell should she fight something that was starting to feel so good? His hands were holding her hips so she couldn’t squirm away, and then she didn’t want to;, she wanted more, she wanted closer, and she pushed up, his wicked, swirling tongue driving a need inside her that was dark, crushing, and she should fight him, not move closer. Her body was no longer listening, and she arched her back in pleasure when something flashed through her. It was brief but shaking, a spike of...oh, God, there was another one, and then her whole body convulsed as he held her hips still, drinking from her, and for a moment everything went blank as the orgasm hit her, and she was shattered.