His expression was murderous. After a few faltering steps, Avery moved toward him with the undaunted carriage of a criminal who knows the jig is up but is still unwilling to confess.
"There she is, Mr. Rutledge," the doorman said cheerfully.
"I told you she would probably be back any second."
For the doorman's benefit, Tate kept his voice light. "I was getting worried, Carole." His fingers wrapped around her upper arm with the strength of a python.
He "escorted" her through the lobby. In the elevator, they faced forward, saying nothing, while anger arced between them. He unlocked the door to their room and let her precede him inside.
The security lock had a final, metallic sound when he flipped it forward. Neither reached for a light. Neither thought to. For illumination, they relied solely on the weak night-light burning in the bathroom behind a faux nautilus shell.
"Where the hell did you go?" Tate demanded without preamble.
"To the McDonald's on the comer. Remember, I didn't eat much dinner at the banquet. I was hungry. As long as you were with Jack, I thought—"
''Who was the guy?''
She started to play dumb, but thought better of it. He had obviously seen her with Van, but hadn't recognized him. While she was deliberating on whether to shoot straight or lie, he advanced on her. ''Was he a dealer?''
Her jaw went slack with astonishment. ''A drug dealer?''
"I know that on occasion you and Fancy have smoked pot. I hope to God that's all you've done, but a senatorial candidate's wife doesn't buy grass off the street from an unknown pusher, Carole. For God's sake, he could have been an undercover-"
"That was Van Lovejoy!" she shouted angrily. Obviously the name didn't ring any bells. He gave her a blank stare. "The cameraman from KTEX. He shot the video for your TV commercial. Remember?''
She knocked him aside and swept past him, moved to the dresser and began removing her jewelry, dropping the pieces onto the surface with little regard for their value or delicacy.
"What were you doing with him?"
"Walking," she said flippantly, addressing his reflection behind her own in the mirror. In the dim light he appeared dark and intimidating. She refused to be cowed. "I ran into him at McDonald's. He and the station's reporter are staying at the Holiday Inn, I believe he said." Lying was becoming easier. She was getting lots of practice. "Anyway, he chided me for walking alone and insisted on seeing me back to the hotel."
"Smart fellow. A hell of a lot smarter than you. What the hell were you thinking of to go out alone at this time of night?"
"I was hungry," she said, raising her voice. "Ever think of room service?"
"I needed air."
"So open a window."
''What does it matter to you if I went out? You were with Jack. Jack and Eddy. Laurel and Hardy. Tweedledee and Tweedledum." She wagged her head from side to side in time to her words. "If it's not one who has something urgent to discuss with you, it's the other. One of them is always knocking on your door."
"Don't get off the subject. We're talking about you, not Jack or Eddy."
"What about me?"
"What made you so nervous tonight?"
"I wasn't nervous."
She tried to sidestep him again, but he wouldn't have it. He blocked her path and caught her by the shoulders. "Something's wrong. I know there is. What have you done this time? You'd better tell me before I find out from somebody else."
"What makes you think I've done something?"
"Because you won't look me in the eye."
"I'm avoiding you, yes. But only because I'm mad, not because I've committed what you would consider a transgression.''
"That's been your routine in the past, Carole."
"Don't call me—" Avery caught herself just in time.
"Don't call you what?"
"Nothing." She hated having him address her as Carole.
"Don't call me a liar," she amended. Defiantly, she flung her head back. "And just so you'll know from me before you hear it from somebody else, Van Lovejoy was smoking a joint. He even offered it to me. I refused. Now, do I pass muster, Mr. Senator?"
Tate was furiously rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. "Don't wander off by yourself like that again."
"Don't put me on a short leash."
"I don't care what you do, dammit," he growled, gripping her shoulders harder. "It's just not safe for you to be alone."
"Alone?" she repeated in a harsh, mirthless tone. "Alone? We're never alone."
"We're alone right now."
It occurred to them simultaneously that they were standing chest to chest. One was breathing with as much agitation as the other. Their blood was running hot and their tempers were high. Avery felt her nerves sizzle like fallen hot wires that snaked across a rain-slick street.
His arms went around her, met at the center of her back, and jerked her against him. Avery went limp with desire. Then, moving as one, their mouths came together in a ravenous kiss. She folded her arms around his neck and provocatively arched her body into his. His hands slid over her derriere and roughly drew her up high and hard against the front of his body.
Their breathing was loud. So was the rustle of their evening clothes. Their mouths twisted against each other; their tongues were too greedy to exercise finesse.
Tate walked her backward into the wall, which then served the original purpose of his hands by keeping her middle cemented to him. His fingers curved tightly around her head and held it in place while he gave her a hungry kiss.
The kiss was carnal. It had a dark soul. It touched off elemental sparks that were as exciting to Avery as the first tongues of flame were to primal man. It conveyed that much heat, that much promise.
She attacked the studs on his pleated shirt. One by one they landed soundlessly in the carpeting. She peeled the shirt wide and bared his chest. Her open mouth found the very center of it. He swore with pleasure and reached behind her for the fastenings on her dress.
They eluded his fumbling fingers. Fabric was ripped. Beads scattered. Sequins rained down. Neither was mindful of the damage. He worked the dress down her shoulders and planted a fervent kiss on the upper curve of her brëast, then reached for the clasp of her strapless brassiere.
Avery panicked when it fell open. He would know! But his eyes were closed. His lips were his sensors, not his eyes. He kissed her brëasts, stroking the tips with his tongue, drawing them into his mouth.
He needed her. She wanted him to need her. She couldn't give enough.
She tugged his cuffs over his hands without even unhooking his cuff links. He flapped his arms until he was entirely free of his shirt, then slipped his hands beneath the hem of her dress. They smoothed up her thighs, caught the elastic of her underwear, and worked it down. Then his palm was on her, his fingers inside her, and she was gasping hoarse, whimpering, wanting sounds.
"You're my wife," he said thickly. "You deserve a little better than to be banged against the wall."
He released her and stepped away. In seconds he was out of his shoes and socks, leaving his trousers in a heap on the carpet.
Avery shimmied out of her dress, kicked off her shoes, and quickly moved to the bed. The housekeeper had already turned it down. She brushed the chocolate mints off the pillow and slid between the sheets. The lacy black garter belt came off with a snap. Her stockings had barely cleared her toes when Tate reached for her.
She went willingly as he pulled her against his warm, hairy nakedness. Their mouths met for another deep, wet kiss. His sex was hard and smooth. It probed the softness of her belly, nestled in the vee of dark curls.
He cupped her breast, lifted it, ran this thumb lightly back and forth over her nipple, and applied his tongue to it. With no resistance from her, he separated her thighs. The cleft between them was soft and sensitive and creamy. She gasped several short, choppy breaths as his fingers played over her.
Then he rolled her to her back and guided his rigid erëction into the moist, oval opening. Her body received him coyly because he was very large and hard and she was very small and soft. Man and woman. As it should be. His power was reduced to weakness; her vulnerability was made strong.
She marveled at the absoluteness of his possession. It was invasive but sweet, unencumbered yet yearning. Her back and throat arched in total surrender. He went farther, touched deeper, reached higher than she believed possible.
Above her, he was straining to withhold his climax, to sustain the pleasure, but that was asking too much of his body, which had been imprisoned by self-imposed abstinence for so long.
He sank into her only a few times before he climaxed.
The room was so silent she could hear the ticking of his wristwatch where his hand lay beside her head on the pillow. She didn't dare look at him. Touching him wasn't even a remote possibility. She lay there and listened as his breathing returned to normal. Except for the rising and falling of his chest, he lay motionless.
It was over.
Eventually she rolled to her side, facing away from him.
She tucked the pillow beneath her cheek and drew her knees against her chest. She was hurting, but she couldn't specify how or where or why.
Several minutes elapsed. When she first felt the stroking movement of his hand on her waist, she thought it was because she had wished it so badly that her imagination had made her feel it.
His hand settled in the curve of her waist and applied enough pressure to bring her over to her back again. She gazed up into his face, her eyes large and inquisitive and brimming with misgiving.
"I've always been fair," he whispered.
He drew his knuckles across her cheek, then over her lips. They'd been scraped by his beard stubble. At his tender touch, Avery swallowed emotionally. Her lips parted, but she couldn't speak aloud what she felt in her heart.
Tate lowered his head and kissed her softly. He paused, then kissed her again with the same delicacy. His cheeks were very hot against hers. Acting on instinct and overwhelming need, she reached up and touched the bandage at his hairline. Affectionately, her fingers sifted through his tousled hair. She traced the cleft in his chin with her fingernail.
God, she loved this man.
His lips settled against hers with purpose. His tongue slipped between her lips. Gently, erotically, he worked it in and out, making love to her mouth. She made a small, wanton sound. He responded by drawing her closer to him, close enough for his softened pënis to nestle in the humid warmth between her thighs.
He kept kissing her mouth, her neck, her shoulders, while he fondled her breasts. His stroking fingers made the nîpples stiff for his mouth. Hotly, wetly, he sucked them with tempered greed, until she was moving beneath him restlessly. He kissed her stomach, her undulating abdomen, the sensitive space between her pelvic bones.
Avery, lost to the touch of his mouth on her skin, threaded her fingers through his hair and held on tight.
Between her thighs, she was absurdly slippery, but his fingers dipped into her without intimidation. He discovered that tiny, distended nubbin of flesh between the pouting lips. He pressed it, feathered it, gently rolled it between his fingers.
She spoke his name on a serrated sigh. Her body quickened.
Small shudders began to ripple through her. Reflexively she drew her knees up.
"I'm hard again."
His voice was tinged with wonder. Unintentionally he had spoken aloud the realization that had him mystified. He hadn't expected to need her again so soon, nor to ever need her as violently as he did now.
His entrance was surer than before, yet he took more time. When he was fully buried inside her, he turned his face into her neck and gently pulled her skin between his teeth. Avery's body responded instantly. Her inner muscles flexed, tightly squeezing him. With a low sound, he mindlessly began rocking his hips forward and backward.
She clung to him. Each rhythmic stroke propelled her closer to the light glimmering at the end of a dark tunnel. Her eyelids fluttered. She raced, harder and faster.
The light exploded around her brilliantly and she was consumed.
Tate released a long, low moan. His whole body tensed. He came and came and came, scalding and fierce, until he was completely empty. He said nothing when he disengaged his body from hers. He turned away, giving her his back and drawing the sheet over his sweat-beaded shoulders.
Avery faced the opposite wall, trying to keep her crying silent. Physically it had been the finest sex imaginable, far surpassing anything she had ever experienced from the few lovers she'd had. There had been pitifully few. Relationships required time, and she'd sacrificed most of hers to the pursuit of her career. The obvious difference with this time was the love she had for her partner.
But for Tate it had started and ended as a biological release. Anger had been his turn-on, not love or even affection. He'd given her a climax, but that had been an obligation considerately fulfilled and nothing more.
The foreplay had been technically excellent but impersonal. They hadn't luxuriated in their repletion, though she'd longed to explore his naked body, familiarize her eyes and hands and mouth with every nuance of it. No endearments had been whispered. No vows of love had been pledged. He hadn't once spoken her name.
He didn't even know it.