Bitter Sweet by Lavyrle Spencer Read Free Book Online Page A

lying beneath her, reached up to stroke her hair.
    ‘I like the new colour’ he murmured, threading his fingers back along her skull, combing her hair towards the ceiling, then letting it fall. She had hair as coarse as a mare’s tail, thick and healthy. Daytime, she wore it drawn back to the nape in a classic, smooth, tucked tail, held by a sixty-dollar gold barrette. Tonight it bunched around her high cheekbones, making her look like Cleopatra in an up-draught.
    She sat on his abdomen, svelte, nude, shaking her head until the hair slapped the corners of her eyes, flexing her fingers in the hair on his chest like a dozing cat.
    ‘Maurice did it... in Chicago .’
    ‘Maurice, hm?’
    She gave her head a final shake and let an insinuating smile tease her lips as she studied him with hooded eyes.
    ‘Mm-hmm . . .’
    On her hips his hands flexed repeatedly. ‘You know, you’re incredible.’
    ‘Why?’ She scratched a dim white line from his throat down to his pelvic arch and watched it return to its natural colour.
    ‘You wake up in the middle of the night looking as if you just got up from Maurice’s chair.’
    Her eyebrows were brushed upward, her eyelashes thick and black around deep brown eyes. Long ago, when she’d been in training to learn her trade, she’d told him a fact she’d learned: that most people are born with a single row of lashes, but some are blessed with a double. Nancy had a double and then some. She had incredible eyes. Lips, too. ‘Come here,’ he ordered gruffly, catching her by the armpits and tipping her down.
    ‘We’ve got five days to make up for.’ He flipped her over neatly and slipped a hand between her legs, touched her inside, found her wet and swollen with desire equalling his own. He felt her cool hand surround him at last and shuddered with her first stroke. They knew each other’s sexual temperaments intrinsically, knew what the other needed, wanted, liked best.
    But at the moment when he reached to place himself inside her, she pressed him away, whispering, ‘Wait, sweetheart, I’ll be right back.’
    He stayed where he was, pinning her down. ‘Why don’t you forget it tonight?’
    ‘I can’t. It’s too risky.’
    ‘So what?’ He continued enticing her, stroking her shallowly, strewing kisses across her face. ‘Take a chance,’ he murmured against her lips. ‘Would it be the end of the world if you got pregnant?’
    She chuckled, bit the end of his chin and repeated, Il be right back,’ then escaped and padded across the carpet to the bathroom down the hall.
    He sighed, flopped to his back and closed his eyes. When? But he knew the answer. Never.
    She pampered her body not only for the benefit of Orlane cosmetics, not only for him, but for herself. She was afraid of jeopardizing that perfection. He had taken a chance, introducing the subject tonight. Most times when he mentioned having a baby, she grew indignant and found something in the room to occupy her attention. Afterward, for the remainder of their weekend together, the atmosphere would be strained. So he’d learned not to badger her about it. But the years were on a downhill run. In October he’d be forty-one; another two years or so and he’d be too old to want to start a family. A kid deserved an old man with a little zip and zest, one he could scrimmage and wrestle with, reel in the big ones with.
    Eric recalled his earliest memory, of riding above his father’s head, seated on the old man’s wide, cupped palm while the gulls wheeled overhead. ‘See them birds, son? Follow them and they’ll tell you where there’s fish.’ In sharp contrast came the memory of himself and his brothers and sister standing around the bed when his father died, all with tears streaming down their faces as one by one they kissed the old man’s lifeless cheek, then their ma’s, before leaving her alone with him. More than anything in the world, he wanted a family.
    The mattress shifted and Eric opened his eyes.