Microsoft Word - Rogers, Rosemary - The Crowd Pleasers by kps Read Free Book Online

her robe before he stripped off his own clothing.
    Unshaded lights blazed an outline of the mirror, and the whole world was outside the door, but nothing seemed to matter at this moment, this time.
    Desire was a snake, gnawing at her vitals, slowly uncoiling inside her and filling her with sensations she hadn't known existed. All her reactions were purely instinctive, completely primitive. And if his mouth hadn't covered hers she would have screamed aloud when the moment of cloudburst came, the only reality that of his body over hers, filling her, taking her past naked desire to fulfillment, all without wasted words.
    There was a wetness on her face. She didn't know it was from tears until Webb put his hand up and wiped them away gently with his fingers. She thought his fingers shook, but she couldn't be certain; her own body was shaken by tremors she couldn't control.
    Anne kept her eyes closed-against the glaring lights, against any form of reality that might take her back to what she had been before-before this.

    "Jesus Christ, Annie!" Webb's voice was an oddly harsh, forced-out whisper-she could still feel that fast cadence of his breathing against her, but he hadn't moved, and neither had she since that final explosion of physical sensation. All her senses gathered up into one tight, aching knot until it had become a starburst ... No bells going off, but who needed bells?
    "Did I hurt you, baby?" Gentler now, his fingers still touching her face, smoothing back strands of damp hair. She shook her head no, wondering if she was ever going to be the same again-if, when she opened her eyes and looked at him, the way he looked at her would be different. When he moved as if to draw away from her, Anne realized suddenly that she was still clutching him tight, her arms locked around his body, her fingers like nerve ends that could feel every slight movement of his muscles rippling under the smooth, sweat-slippery flesh of his back.
    She did open her eyes then, and he was staring down at her-not smiling with self-satisfaction as she'd half-dreaded, not frowning with the impatience of sated passion either. His look seemed to concentrate on her intently, as if he too didn't quite believe what had happened between them just now.
    "Annie ..."
    Then the telephone, sitting squat and malevolent on the floor, began to ring insistently. She'd never know what he had been about to say or how she might have answered him.
    Br-rr... Br-rr ...
    Webb swore violently under his breath as her arms fell limply from around him.
    At least she could watch him ... Anne had never thought a picture of a male nude particularly entrancing, but now she found that the sight of Webb's naked body, the self-assured grace with which he moved, striding to snatch up the telephone, carried its own excitement. She had never been so acutely aware of a man's body, and its beauty, its "fearful symmetry," as she was now. And he did fit those lines from Blake's poem-"Tyger, tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night .. ,"
    She felt as if she was on some kind of a high-not satiated but strangely content, so that even the interruption of the telephone couldn't bother her. Not yet ...
    Webb had scooped up the phone, snatching off the receiver with an angry gesture.
    "Yeah?" And now he sounded mad, his voice turning hard. "Yeah, Harris. Sure, Anne's here and she's okay ... That was real thoughtful of you ... Listen, why don't you talk to her?"
    He was thrusting the phone at her, forcing her to fight the lethargy in her limbs in order to sit up and take it.
    "Anne?" Harris's voice sounded worried. "Listen, I didn't mean to desert you, love, but that girl Tanya had been drinking, and she was working herself up into an extremely unpleasant mood ... rather than have her banging at the door and creating a scene, I thought it might be best to whisk her away. But I'm concerned about you. Are you sure you're okay?" He seemed to drop his voice slightly. "I know how nasty Webb