A Perfectly Imperfect Match (Matchmaking Mamas) (17 page)

Elizabeth grinned. She had no idea he was capable of that level of exaggeration. “Well, if nothing else, that would take care of the entertainment portion of your evening,” she teased.

He could just see that—on second thought, he most definitely did
not
want to see that. “I don’t think Megan would exactly see it your way. She hates feeling like a walrus, which is the way she describes herself these days. The only thing she hates more than that is the thought of the pain she’s in for when she eventually goes into labor.”

“Labor doesn’t necessarily have to be bad,” she told Jared. “I’ve heard stories that some women actually have had an easy time of it.”

He laughed shortly, shaking his head. “Megan has
never
had an easy time of it—no matter what’s involved.” His sister had a tendency to overdramatize everything. She was the type that if she sneezed, she was convinced she was coming down with a fatal strain of pneumonia. “It’s not in her nature. Her kid will probably be in therapy by the time he or she is three months old.”

That didn’t sound very promising, she thought. “Maybe your sister’ll change once the baby is born. Babies have a way of doing that.”

“I hope you’re right—for her husband’s sake as well as the baby’s,” he said, although he had to admit he had his doubts. Megan, unfortunately, wasn’t anything like Elizabeth.

The moment the thought occurred to him, he looked at Elizabeth thoughtfully. He really liked the upbeat way she viewed things. “Are you always this optimistic?”

Elizabeth lifted and then lowered her shoulders in a vague shrug.

“I do my best. Being a pessimist brings not only the person having dark thoughts down, but it brings down everyone around that person as well. Personally, I like leaving people with a smile, not depressing thoughts.” That had always been her goal, ever since she’d first succeeded in making her father smile by playing her mother’s violin. “That’s why I love the violin,” she explained.

He couldn’t see the connection. “Come again?”

“Depending on what you play,” she told him, “you can either bring tears to someone’s eyes or a smile to their lips.”

“And you can do that with a violin?” he asked, somewhat skeptical of the claim.

“Absolutely. I can give you a demonstration if you like,” she offered.

He had no doubt that she could back up her claim. She was a remarkable woman who, he was growing to believe, could do anything she set her mind to. But right now, he wasn’t all that interested in listening to a private concert. He was more interested in regaining the foothold that had been established before his mother and her father had interrupted.

“I know another way to bring about that smile you mentioned.”

Was it just her, or was that incredibly seductive-sounding?

There went her heart again, beating like a drummer working his way to a crescendo. She barely had enough oxygen to utter, “Oh?”

“Yes. If you’d like, I could give
you
a demonstration,” he offered, turning her words back around to her.

Her lips were all but stuck together. She nodded, then managed to whisper almost haltingly, “All right.” Elizabeth found herself out of breath by the second word.

Jared’s eyes held hers prisoner as he slowly slipped his arms around her.

But just before he lowered his mouth to hers, he stopped.

Her breath caught in her throat.

Was something wrong?

Had he decided he was getting too involved with someone he’d hired, someone who, however temporarily, was employed by him?

Elizabeth debated just drawing back, or possibly saying something flippant and face-saving—although for the life of her, she didn’t know what—when she saw Jared taking his phone out.

Was he going to call someone?

Now?

But rather than placing a call, he turned the phone off.

“This time, no interruptions,” he told her, placing the phone on the coffee table.

Incredibly relieved and just as equally charged with anticipation, Elizabeth did the same with her phone.

“No interruptions,” she echoed.

And there weren’t any.

Chapter Thirteen

H
e hadn’t planned this.

But he would have been lying if he pretended that he hadn’t thought about it.

He had.

More than once.

Thought about what it might be like to explore Elizabeth’s soft, stirring body. To slowly peel away her clothing and discover if what he’d envisioned when his imagination had taken flight was actually better than the real thing.

Or if, just possibly, fantasy ultimately didn’t hold a candle to reality.

But in every version, whether in the one where he stopped on the threshold of discovery, or in the one where the exploratory venture was taken all the way to completion, sanity and clearheadness had always managed to prevail.

But not so in reality.

Because he found himself utterly breathless almost from the first moment, breathless and eager, as something that he’d grown rather accustomed to enjoying morphed into an entirely new experience for him.

For him, anticipation had always been the best part of lovemaking because once the ground was tread and the walls breached, the experience was no more unique than the last one had been.

But this, this just kept building rather than ebbing. This was a bouquet of surprises that he couldn’t even begin to accurately anticipate. And even if he could, anticipation simply could not compare to what was happening.

At first, he’d only meant to kiss Elizabeth.

And then, he told himself, he only wanted to kiss her a little more, a little longer, perhaps a little more passionately.

But that road didn’t lead to a jumping-off place. It only led deeper into the forest of desires.

It was a simple matter of the more he kissed her, the more he
wanted
to kiss her.

The more he wanted.

In a confused attempt to stem the rising tide of passion, he held her to him, fitting her body against his. But the moment he did, he realized his mistake. Because doing that just led to something more.

Led to a greater yearning.

Jared didn’t remember trailing his hands along the sides of her body, absorbing the delicate swell of her breasts, but the moment he did so, the flame within him flared like a backdraft, threatening to set him on fire.

But hard though it was, he would have refrained from filling his hands with her supple flesh. He would have left her clothes in place and struggled mightily to finally break the connection, to back away. He would have—had she not begun to tug on his shirt, separating the buttons from their holes and dragging the material off his shoulders.

That spelled his complete undoing.

He felt his stomach muscles contracting, felt the rest of him all but dissolving as the raw need to touch her, to make love with her, threatened to utterly consume him.

After that, everything seemed to become a hazy frenzy.

Jared vaguely remembered leading her to the couch and helping her tug away his clothing. Remembered more acutely removing hers as his fingers interfered with hers, his eagerness feeding hers and hers his, creating a swirling cauldron of heat, desire and the promise of ultimate fulfillment that shimmered on the horizon.

She had no idea what came over her. No idea how one thing just kept leading to another and then another. Instead, she discovered what it meant to be on the brink of losing her ability to think, to be rational, to act on her better instincts.

The instincts she was aware of now all focused on sustaining this wondrous pleasure she was experiencing, on simultaneously receiving it and giving it.

Everywhere his lips touched, she could feel her anticipation heightening, could feel her eagerness multiplying, so that it seemed to totally consume her in ways she’d never imagined.

It was in the very air she breathed.

She’d always been so rational before, enjoying the few times that she’d found herself at this point, in this position, making love with someone.

But during all those times, her mind had never taken a hiatus. She’d never just focused on her reaction, on attaining that delicious explosion and coaxing one from her partner as well.

This time, though, it was different.

Everything
with Jared was different, she realized before she was incapable of connecting her thoughts anymore.

And then, just like that, she didn’t care about anything.

Didn’t care that she wanted to keep a tight rein on herself because to fully give of herself was to leave herself completely vulnerable and that had always filled her with fear.

Moreover, she didn’t remember to compartmentalize her feelings so that her sense of self-preservation wasn’t lost. All that had been born of apprehension. Fear of abandonment, of being left behind, to cope and to carry on no matter how much pain her heart was in.

And while she envied what her parents had had, she never wanted to leave herself open to the utter heartache that loving someone so completely, with all her heart, ushered in.

Elizabeth didn’t want to follow in her father’s footsteps.

But all those well-thought-out safeguards that were supposed to protect her heart had gotten lost somehow, burned to a crisp in the fires of this incredible longing that Jared had created within her.

Created just by kissing her.

Fed just by touching her.

As his lips trailed along her skin, causing her to twist and turn into him, Elizabeth did what she could to hold on to that last bit of control and keep it from slipping away.

It was an effort doomed to failure.

The very next moment, she felt herself being swept away, arching her back so as to somehow absorb the sensation even more thoroughly than she had. At the same time, the acute ache, the sweet agony of the climax he’d generated, was almost too much for her to contain.

Elizabeth cried out his name, grasping at him, pulling him back toward her.

He’d forged a path of heat along her bare skin, beginning at her forehead and ending at the most sensitive part of her, at her very core.

Pulling himself up again so that their faces were level, his arms bracketing her upper torso, Jared knew he hadn’t the strength to hold back any longer. Even if he wanted to draw out the moment one second longer, he couldn’t.

With his heart pounding harder than he recalled it ever doing, Jared lowered his hips to hers, driving himself into her slowly with the last shred of restraint he had.

And then the last band of self-control was ruptured.

The tempo, begun whisper slow, built, increasing almost recklessly.

He felt her grasp on to his shoulders, felt her matching his movements, driven by the same frantic melody that was playing over and over in his head.

And then he was there.

And she was with him.

He didn’t need to ask, to guess, he knew. The pinnacle was reached simultaneously by both of them and, suddenly, they were airborne, diving off the edge while holding hands.

Free-falling to earth together.

Ever so slowly, the euphoria tiptoed back, receding, taking the multicolored beams of the dazzling rainbow with it. Uncovering the world that it had temporarily hidden beneath its rays.

He’d never been good at small talk, especially not in a situation that could easily have become very uncomfortable.

The words that rose to his lips hadn’t been filtered through his brain first, hadn’t come from some well-thumbed afterglow handbook. They just seemed to emerge of their own accord.

“That was incredible,” he murmured, punctuating his statement with a kiss that he pressed to her forehead.

Her forehead was damp, he noted. Just like the rest of him was.

That was incredible.

Did he say that to all the women he made love with? she wondered.

Part of her almost wished that he did and that she would somehow be able to prove it for sure. Because if he did, if he was callous enough to use the same lines on different women, well, that would remove him from her heart—a place where he seemed to be firmly embedded.

Oh God, she couldn’t let him stay there. She just couldn’t. She couldn’t let herself feel this way about him.

But what is the harm?
a little voice in her head whispered.
Just for a little while, what is the harm? Enjoy it, enjoy yourself, and then move on. You’ll be okay if you know it won’t last.

But would she? Would she be okay? And, more to the point, would she be able to get herself to move on?

She was afraid that she knew the answer to both of those questions.

“I don’t know about you,” Jared continued after several beats had gone by. “But I may never move again. I’ve never felt so exhausted in my life,” he confessed. His words were accompanied by a mighty sigh that seemed to come from his very toes.

She raised her head and then drew her elbow against her, propping herself up on the couch for a second to look at him. And then she splayed her hands along his broad chest and rested her head there.

“Completely exhausted?” she asked in a voice that sounded far too innocent not to have something hidden just beneath the surface.

“Yes.” It took effort to form even that word.

Very slowly, she drew herself up along his body until their torsos were strategically level. “You’re sure you’re completely exhausted?”

“I’m sure— Oh, the hell with it,” Jared muttered, framing her face with his hands and drawing her mouth down to his as he surrendered.

The moment he did, it became evident to both of them that perhaps he wasn’t really as exhausted as he’d first thought.

Definitely not too tired for this, he silently amended as desire for Elizabeth, for another round of the exquisite pleasure he’d just experienced, sprang up within him, supplying him with another shot of revitalizing energy.

* * *

When Elizabeth woke up, reluctantly giving up the incredible dream she was having, it was to the sight of Jared moving around her bedroom, looking for his discarded clothing.