Fools Rush In Read online

  “Kiss me,” she urged in a breathless tone that he knew signaled mounting desire. He needed to slow down, or he’d explode. She swung her hips into him, her only thought seeming to be the pleasure he gave her. When she tried to fit her body to him, he lifted her off her feet, carried her to his bed, and lay her there. Her rapid breathing nearly undid him, and when she spread her legs, he jumped to full readiness.

  “May I take this off?” he asked, his voice deep, guttural, as his fingers gripped her robe. He thought he saw a flash of discomfort—or was it fear?—in her face. “You’re so beautiful,” he said, hoping to reassure her, as he looked down at the rich treasure awaiting him. “So lovely.” He unhooked her bra and gazed in awe at the sexy lode. She raised her arms to him in an unmistakable invitation and he let his own robe drop to the floor.

  He knelt on the bed, leaned over her, and fell into her open arms. At last. She could feel his body, his power, his maleness. His lips caressed her neck and moved slowly, too slowly, to her mouth, where he drove her nearly wild plunging his tongue in and out, teasing her with what was to come. His fingers tortured first one breast and then the other until she pleaded.

  “Duncan, please. I can’t stand it. I want to feel your mouth on me.”

  His tongue circled an aureole and tortured it until she lifted her body to him, and he took her into this mouth and dragged a keening cry from her. She’d never wanted, needed, anything like she needed him inside her, but he took his time, learning her body with his fingers, his five senses, and suckling her until she cried aloud. Seconds later, his hand began a slow journey down her body, skimming her flesh, brushing, caressing, and teasing. Burning her. Branding her. His mouth closed over a nipple, and his educated fingers began a dance of love at the nub of her femininity. Out of her mind with want, she reached for him.

  “You’re not ready yet, honey.”

  “I am. I am. I’m going crazy.” But he continued the torture, his lips and hands possessing her until, wonder of wonders, a strange, tight fullness gathered inside her and heat seared the bottom of her feet as the liquid of love dampened his fingers.

  “Duncan, what’s happening to me?”

  “Shhhh, darling. I’m loving you.”

  “Duncan, what’s happening to me? I feel like I’m going to explode.”

  Frustrated, she found him and took him into her hands, and he moved above her.

  What was he waiting for? “Duncan?”

  “May I?”

  “Yes. Oh, Lord, yes!”

  He stopped to protect her and then, staring into her eyes, he slowly began to enter.

  “Relax, and let yourself go, honey. It’ll work just fine. Just relax and trust me. I’ll take us where we want to go.”

  Quit fighting it and let yourself go. Kenneth’s words reverberated through her brain, and she froze, unable to move.

  Duncan locked her in a fierce embrace. “Listen to me, sweetheart, it’s you and me here and nobody else. I’m yours. Give yourself to me. That’s it. Relax and let me love you.”

  She pushed the past out of her mind, let herself relax, and he began to move. She found his rhythm, and that tight, full feeling was soon in her again, all over her. She thought she’d die if she didn’t burst.

  “Duncan, I want to…to burst open. Honey, do something.”

  With his hands beneath her hips, he thrust deeply, vigorously, until she couldn’t hold back the screams, and erupted in a vortex of throbbing pulsations that sucked her into a whirlpool of ecstasy. She threw out her arms, exhausted, but he hadn’t finished with her, and within minutes he drove her to another wild, volcanic eruption. She was one with him, uncertain where she began and he ended. The words came to her lips, and she had to bite her tongue, as he plunged again and again, wringing herself out of herself, drawing from her a thunderous explosion, and then collapsing, splintered into her arms.

  She held him to her as tightly as she could, squeezing him until she thought her arms would break. If only she could tell him what she felt, how she loved him. She caressed his head lying on her shoulder and skimmed her hands over his back. As though to let her know he understood, he kissed her cheek, and then, resting on his elbows, gathered her to him and kissed her as though he couldn’t get enough of her, wanted to devour her. Savored. Cherished. She thought her heart would burst with joy and with love. He’d given her all that she had dreamed of, sated her with loving, and now, he adored her.

  He looked into her eyes, and a dazzling smile took possession of his face. “Are you all right?”

  Didn’t he know? “I’ve never been so happy in my life,” she told him. “You gave me something that had eluded me. Thank you. I’ll never forget this time with you. Never.”

  His smile broadened. “I finally guessed that. You shot my ego into the stratosphere. Why haven’t you had…been fulfilled? You are the most sensuous, the most physically alive woman I’ve ever known.”

  Maybe what she’d had with Kenneth hadn’t been love, for it didn’t approximate or even come near to her feelings for Duncan. She locked him in her arms and told him, “At least I know it was never my fault.”

  He kissed her, fell over on his back, tucked her to his side, and said, “We couldn’t miss, Justine; the chemistry between us is so strong that we didn’t stand a chance of avoiding it, nor of staying away from each other. I’ve done everything I could to prevent this, but the night you came here for the interview, I knew I wanted you. I could handle that, but these other feelings crept in and…when you knocked on my door, I was going crazy for you.”

  She wanted to ask him where they went from there, but she knew it had to be a one-time thing, because he wouldn’t forgive her deception, and the more she had of him, the more devastated she’d be when he ended their ties. And what should she expect anyway? She was still his employee, nanny to his child, the child to whom she’d given birth. Shudders plowed through her at the thought that this may be the only time she would fly to the sun in his arms.

  She threw her left arm across his flat belly and stroked him. “Duncan, make love to me until I don’t know who I am.”

  He sat up and looked down into her face. “What happened? Why are you frightened? Don’t tell me you’re sorry.”

  “How could I be sorry? I don’t usually get what I want from life,” she whispered, “so let me cheat Providence this once. I want to know one more time what I felt with you just now.”

  He gazed at her for a long time before he said, “Let’s not cross our bridges before we get to them.” Then he bent to her lips and began their next tumultuous ride to paradise…

  Replete. Sated. She held him in her arms and in her body and knew beyond a doubt that the heaven she’d found with him would cost her, that the price would probably be more than any woman should have to pay. She hadn’t meant to communicate her momentary trepidation to him, but she must have, because he put both arms beneath her shoulders and looked deeply into her eyes.

  “I’m asking you again. Are you sorry?”

  It was so strange being with him that way, her senses filed to a fine point, totally in tune with him. Her body still bloomed from his marksmanship. Echoes of his murmurs, his lover’s entreaties, resonated through her head. She gazed up at him. Brazen. Assured. Her soul knew him. He shifted slightly, and she clutched at his hips. Surely he wouldn’t separate from her, from the place in her where he belonged.

  “Are you sorry?” He persisted, his eyes on her and his mouth barely a centimeter from hers.

  “How could I be? I knew the score, Duncan, and I can’t be sorry for knowing at last who I am, for coming alive in your arms—as if I’d been reborn. What about you?”

  His lips brushed her mouth. “Only if you are. You gave me something so special, that I can’t regret it, nor will I forget it. I don’t know about the future, but I—”

  The fingers of her left hand went to his lips, cutting off his words. She didn’t want to hear about tomorrow. “Don’t. Please. Not now. Don’t interfere wi
th what we have right now.”

  His kisses drugged her. “Sweetheart, we can’t share what we’ve had in this bed and pretend it’s business as usual. It won’t be the same with us, so there’s no use pretending that nothing happened. As far as I’m concerned, everything has changed.”

  She shoved back a rising panic and put a cool tone in her voice. “Does that mean you want me to leave?”

  She failed to see the humor in that or anything right then and pinched his shoulder in reprimand when he laughed.

  “You’re kidding, I hope.”

  Then, to her amazement, he kissed her left breast, put his head on her shoulder and went to sleep. And he could sleep; he wasn’t living a lie. But she had just quadrupled her chances of misery, just added one more certain cause for heartbreak.

  Chapter 10

  She didn’t want to arouse him and end the moments of incredible peace with him in her arms, but the call could be important. She stroked his head, caressing him with a tenderness that flowed from her whole being. “Duncan, your phone’s ringing.”

  “Huh?”

  He was upright immediately. “Did you say telephone?”

  It rang again, and he reached for it. “Hello?” After listening for a minute or so, his muscles flexed with alertness, and she knew that for the present, at least, she’d lost him. “All right, I’ll be over there in the morning.”

  He hung up, fell over on his back, and stared up at the ceiling. “Wayne wants me to start on something urgent tomorrow, which means I have to finish my series on juveniles tonight and take it in with me. I’d hoped for a couple of days, but I’ll get it done. If you’ll feed Tonya and yourself, I’ll get a sandwich or something.” He raised up, braced himself on his left elbow, and looked steadily at her. “Will you give me this time I need and not torture yourself about answers or solutions or feel as though I’m a rat for ignoring you? Will you?”

  She took his hand. “Of course. After all, I understand pro…I know you have a job to do.”

  She’d almost told him she understood professional responsibility, which, as a clinical psychologist, she certainly did. But he’d apparently missed her slip, and she let herself breathe deeply. He leaned over her, kissed her so quickly that she barely felt it, got up, and headed for the bathroom. She couldn’t help feeling bereft, as though he’d taken her most precious possession. And he could do that if he chose, for he had everything that mattered to her. He had Tonya and himself. Not that she intended to get morose. Not after what he’d just given her. All right, so I messed up; what can I expect after a loving like that?

  She dressed and went to look after Tonya, who greeted her with laughter, bouncing up and down, exuding love. She picked up the happy child, kissed her, and received kisses in return. “I’ve got the world on a string,” she sang out, happier than she’d known she could be.

  “’Atta girl.”

  She whirled around in time to see him wink and head downstairs. An hour later, he walked into Tonya’s room and handed Justine a shopping bag full of mail. He had the nearly impossible task of finishing his series that night, but he’d kept his word and had spent a precious hour getting her mail.

  Using the self-control of a righteous person, she thanked him. “Consider yourself kissed.”

  His wide grin told her that she had found the right vein.

  At nine-thirty the next morning, Duncan stepped off the elevator in the Roundtree Building, energized with the prospect of beginning a new, exciting assignment, though he’d begun the drive to Baltimore after little more than two hours sleep. Finishing that story hadn’t been easy, for his thoughts had gone repeatedly to Justine and his mind blistering experience with her that afternoon. He’d reminded himself repeatedly that he wasn’t going to fall for her, that he’d had his last emotional attachment to any woman. Then he would remember how she’d given herself to him. Totally. Completely, without false pride, and with none of the hysterical faking of his former wife. She had enjoyed everything he’d done to her and had made sure of his own satisfaction, though all he’d needed was his place within her.

  He knew she would want to know where they stood with each other; any woman would, and especially if she had deep feelings as he now suspected Justine had for him. A woman couldn’t give her body with such abandon, such complete trust unless she cared, deeply. And he wondered about himself—the way he’d felt with her—the way in which he’d loved her. He’d be a fool to tell himself that a man could make love to a woman as he’d done if he didn’t care. He’d have to settle a few things with himself before he got back home. He knocked and entered Wayne’s office.

  Wayne skimmed Duncan’s report, his smile broadening as he read. “Man, this thing reads like Mozart’s chamber music, everything where it’s supposed to be when it’s supposed to be there. Congratulations.”

  Both of Duncan’s eyebrows went up. He didn’t want to be reminded of Justine right then. “Don’t tell me you freak out on Mozart, too.”

  “You betcha. Who else does?”

  There was no escaping it, he thought, rubbing his chin reflectively. “Justine. And now my daughter loves it, too.”

  Wayne tapped his Mont Blanc pen on his desk a few times as though weighing his next words. “How is Justine?”

  “Fine.”

  Wayne’s laughter reverberated through the room and into the hallway. “Sorry, man, but if you had committed a murder, what you’re wearing on your face right now would get you a life sentence.”

  Duncan shrugged. At age thirty-five, he didn’t have to discuss his business if he didn’t want to. Not even with Wayne. “As a detective, you’d probably flunk. What’s the latest on this slumlord situation?”

  “The City Council is beginning an investigation of slum housing, and I want your story out before one of those politicians gets a chance to whitewash it.”

  “Yeah. Every paper in town will be after this. I’ll get right on it. By the way, when have you seen my kid sister?”

  Wayne laughed, mainly in embarrassment, he thought. “Man, stop thinking of her as a kid; she’s twenty-seven. And I see her or talk with her every day.”

  Walking toward the door, Duncan glanced at a woman’s framed picture that always sat on a bookcase near Wayne’s desk. “You never did tell me who that gal is. You seeing her, too?”

  Wayne leaned back in his chair and locked his hands behind his head. “I keep that picture where I can see it. There’s an identical one on my night table. Their job is to ensure that I don’t make a fool of myself, to remind me to watch my step with women. You could say that’s why, when it comes to women—Leah included—I move at a snail’s pace.”

  He hadn’t dreamed that he and Wayne had in common disappointment with someone they’d loved. “Put them face down, Wayne. We’re letting people who let us down prevent us from living fully. I know it’s hard, but we have to deal with it. See you, man.” With a ton of luck, he’d be able to take his own advice.

  Duncan set out for CafeAhNay, his first stop for information about anything relating to Baltimore’s inner-city street life. Lottie walked over to his booth as soon as he sat down.

  “Anything going on?” he asked her, as he gave her an order for scrambled eggs, toast, and coffee, pulled out his Frederick Douglas carving and began whittling.

  She nodded. “Head over around Westchester and Fairfax and knock on some doors. You oughta get something.”

  He’d planned to do that, but he appreciated confirmation of his hunch. He stayed there for about an hour picking up loose bits of conversation and making mental notes of what he overheard. On his way to Grace’s place, he flipped on his recorder and summed up the information he’d gotten at CafeAhNay.

  Her smile greeted him as she opened the door. “I checked several tenements,” he told her, “but I can’t find out who owns them, and there’s a reason for that.”

  “I wouldn’t think anybody in Graystone Alley would be afraid to tell you what they know; that area’s hardly fit for sw
ine.”

  “Thanks. I’ve heard about the place. I’ll walk through there.”

  “Make sure it’s morning,” she warned.

  So far nothing concrete, but he’d get the story if he had to cover every inch of West Baltimore by foot. After several fruitless hours, he met two teenaged boys who let him into the building in which they lived, and he jotted down the name and identification number of the elevator inspector. Sensing success, he collected that information in as many apartment buildings as he could enter. Around four o’clock, with night approaching and hunger pangs reminding him that he hadn’t eaten lunch, he saw an old woman limp from one of the most deteriorated buildings he’d seen. He gave her a hand and asked to whom she paid her rent.

  “Mister, on the first of every month, I write a check for six hundred dollars to Hugh Pickford to live in a one-room apartment in this rat-infested place. I mail it to a post office box.”

  Hugh Pickford. His pulse accelerated and his heart thundered in his chest, as he grasped the old woman’s bony arm. “Are you sure, Ma’am? Really sure?”

  “Of course, I’m sure,” she said, obviously aggravated.

  Hugh Pickford! By Damn, he had him at last, right where he wanted him, and when he’d finished, Hugh Pickford would be living rent free—in jail. For twenty-eight long years, he’d dreamed of the day he’d face the man who had set his family out on the street in the dead of winter not caring if they froze or starved. Talk about the chickens coming home to roost! Excited at the chance for revenge, adrenaline rushed through him, a gushing torrent, energizing him. But he didn’t believe that Hugh Pickford was Baltimore’s only slumlord, and he’d find the others just as he’d found Pickford, but he had the propeller for history. He itched to expose that man and all of the rest.

  The Beltway traffic to Washington and home slowed him down and his mind took him back to the previous afternoon when, in Justine’s arms, he’d known at last his potential as a man. If there was more to him, he wasn’t sure he could survive experiencing it. Horns honked, a cacophonous symphony playing to the tune of human frustration. He barely heard it. What would he say to her? What could he say? That he’d gone to heaven in her arms, thank you but no more? Or thank you, please move across the hall? Neither. He wasn’t a cad, but neither was he ready for marriage, legal nor common law. Maybe they would work it out together.