AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Sex at one of these things was not uncommon and it was not as if he had never indulged before but something was different about tonight, for a long few minutes he could not put his finger on it then it clicked. He had wanted to stay.
The thought shocked him. He had not slept next to a woman since his wife had died five years before. Gina’s face floated up before his eyes and he felt that old hollow echo of pain. Cancer had taken her far too early and far too painfully from his life. He had vowed never to love anyone else again.
Sandra reminded him of Gina—not in looks—Gina had been a flame haired beauty with huge china blue eyes and the body of a greyhound; graceful with whip thin limbs. Sandra was rounded and curvy in all the right ways, her breasts had been heavy and her hips had swelled out in a heart attack inducing kind of way, her ass was plump and round, and her hair auburn. Still, there had been that indefinable aura hanging all around her, that sweetness that masked a strength that had called out to him from the moment he had first set eyes on her.
He knew he was playing with fire, a dangerous fire, one that could burn him badly. He was not the kind of man who wanted just a woman’s body, or even to possess her heart, his woman would need to give over herself completely to him and women like that were rare.
“I am going to call it a good night and leave her alone.” The words hung on the air and he put the cigar out, determined not to think any more about her. That proved impossible though.
**
Connor was inside a knot of adoring women when Sandra stepped into the conference’s main room the following morning. She tried not to look at him, and that was really not that difficult either—she could barely see him for the bodies pressed close to his own. Jealousy smote her, surprising her with its intensity.
Connor Beaumont was one of the sexiest men on the planet, and since he was also one of the best suspense writers on the planet, he drew crowds of women everywhere he went. To get him to show up at a conference was a major coup for producers and he knew it.
Sandra had not come to the conference to meet him. She had come to meet one of her idols, Sharon Hampton, another romance writer. Sharon had been giving a discussion on historical romances and the men within the pages of those novels. Sandra had still had ten days of vacation and no plans when she had seen the conference announcement on the pages of the online bookstore she frequented.
The crowd around Connor parted briefly, giving her a brief glimpse of him. He was attired in a black cotton shirt, the sleeves rolled up to reveal his tanned wrists and an expensive watch on his left wrist. His jeans were form fitting and more than one set of eyes were fastened to the hard muscles of his thighs and the terrain of his crotch. His hair hung over his forehead in a slightly messy style and his white toothed grin shone out of his handsome face.
His eyes met hers but there was no recognition in them. She stood there, feeling awkward and silly as his hand rested on the shoulder of a gorgeous blonde woman who had maneuvered herself so close to him that her long slender thighs, clearly visible below the hem of her incredibly short crimson skirt, rubbed against his right flank. He did not seem to object to that touch and Sandra turned away, unable to look at the sight any longer.
Saturday at conferences is typically a blur of activity: classes, discussions, publishers, and writers hawking their latest efforts. Sandra was caught up in the whirl of activity and by nine in the evening, when the formal dinner she had paid to attend began she was not only exhausted from being in the middle of the activity, she was feeling incredibly alone.
That was not a new feeling for her. Sandra had grown up as the only daughter of a solitary man, a professor of ancient literature who spent little time noticing his daughter. He had paid little attention to his wife as well—which was why he had found himself the solo parent to his daughter while his wife took herself off to London to live with a Shakespearian actor. When that failed, she moved to Portugal.
Over the years, Sandra had gotten postcards from all across the globe but she had not seen her mother since the day she had traipsed out the front door with a suitcase in each hand and her daughter crying in the arms of her father.
Sandra had been five then and over the years she had learned to stay quiet, to stay out of the way and to entertain herself. Books were often her only friends, her father was rarely interested in taking his child to activities, and since he was usually lost in some obscure work, he rarely had the time to do much of anything else with her either.
Growing into an adult Sandra had learned that she could get away with almost anything as long as it did not interfere with her father’s study and work habits and she had tried the rebellious route but growing up on a college campus where everyone knew who her father was all but guaranteed her being regarded as off-limits. In town, she found a few local boys who were willing to go out with her but the arm of the college, which employed most of the small town that stretched beyond the campus, was long.
She still lived beneath the long shadow of the campus’s oak trees. She had gotten a degree in French literature, planning to live a life of academia similar to the one she had always known. She taught at the same campus she had grown up in, she knew that she should branch out, grow, but she seemed to be unable to do that. Her life was mostly solitary, she worked and read and kept her small house neat and clean. The men she dated were all so alike they could have been ordered from a catalogue. Nice, safe, well-educated men who opened her car door and paid for dinner, men who never noticed her except when they were offering perfunctory compliments on her dress or hair or perfume. Those men always sort of drifted away after a few weeks or months due to a lack of interest on her part or their own.
Looking at Connor across the room, his head thrown back in a long laugh at something the blonde he had been with earlier had just said to him made Sandra’s head ache. She should have stayed in her own room the night before, kept to herself, and simply gone to bed like she had thousands of night before.
But it had been different, the way he made her feel had been so far out of the bounds of the things she normally felt that she still had no idea of how to handle it. What she did know was that it had been the first time in her life that she had felt whole and complete. She had no idea of why that was though, and was not certain she wanted to know either.
The food on her plate was unremarkable: a piece of Brie baked in a pastry shell that shattered noisily under her fork’s tines, crushed candied almonds had been baked into the appetizer’s center and it made the dish cloying instead of flavorful.
The main course would arrive in a moment and Sandra was fairly certain she no longer wanted it or anything else. The woman speaking at the podium had a strident voice and bright red hair that had been dyed so often it looked like it would break under a finger, shatter like the pastry. The lights were too bright and the smell of too many perfumes and cologne filled the air. Sandra put her fork down and stared at the door at the end of the room, wondering if she could leave without being noticed.
The speech dragged on, the main course arrived and she still could not leave her seat. She bit into overdone chicken covered with capers and a too-rich sauce, rolls that had been drowned in butter and ate the gooey chocolate dessert but none of it registered, all she saw was Connor’s fingers caressing the bare shoulders of the woman parked in the chair next to him.
Connor was aware of her gaze and what was more, he was all too aware of how lovely she looked with her hair pulled back into a sleek little knot that showed off the long and graceful lines of her neck and the high slash of her cheekbones.
The blonde next to him, whose name he was having trouble recalling, smelled of a strong musky perfume and her scarlet lipstick stuck to every surface she touched with those lips. Her mark was on her own wineglass, his fork (he had ordered the fish and she had ordered the chicken then insisted that they try each other’s food) and even his collar. She had aimed for his neck and he had turned his face in time to use his chin as a roadblock to her teeth. His collar would never be the same again.
Dessert came and went and they stood to exit the room. His companion…Lauren, Lori?… simpered out, “I think we should hit the bar and have a nightcap.”
“I have to head upstairs. I have an early flight.”
She froze. Her instincts were as sharp as the stilettos on her feet and she sensed that she was being dumped immediately. “Well, maybe we should tuck you into bed then,” her lips pursed suggestively and her index finger hooked onto the first button of his shirt.
“No, I think I will manage that by myself.” He untangled her finger and took a step back. “It has been a pleasure.”
He vanished before she could make too much of a scene, though he was positive she would not let him off the hook as easily as that. He had a feeling that before morning there would be rumors circulating about everything from the size of his dick to his sexuality. He could not muster up enough of a shit to care about that though; he had spotted Sandra’s straight back exiting the room in a swirl of plain black silk.
He did not mean to follow her but he found himself doing so anyway. She came to a halt before the elevators and he stood beside her silently allowing the crisp clean perfume she wore to cleanse the heavy perfume and cigarette reek of his dinner companion from his nostrils.
