It Had to Be You Part 4

"You seem to be doing real fine all by yourself."

"Tell me, dammit!"

"All right, darlin'. Open my zipper."

"Like this?"

"Just like that."

"Now what?'

"Reach around a little bit and see if you can find anything that catches your interest."

His breathing quickened as she followed his instructions to the letter.

"You're real big." She cradled him in her hands as she arched her back so that her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were pressed deeper into his palms. "I'm getting scared."

"Oh, I'll take it real easy on you."

"You will?"

"I promise."

"It's okay if it hurts a little."

"I wouldn't want to hurt you."

"It's okay. Really."

"If you say so." He smelled bubble gum on her breath as he caught her by the knees and drew them upward, then braced her heels on the desktop. The skirt bunched across her stomach. He moved between her open thighs and slipped a finger inside her.

"Does that hurt?"

"Oh, yes. Yes! What are you going to do to me?"

He told her. Roughly. Explicitly.

Her breathing grew heavier and he could feel the heat of her skin. He pushed off her school jacket and, slipping his hands beneath her bare b.u.t.tocks, lifted her from the desk. She wrapped her legs around his hips and ground her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against the tucks of his s.h.i.+rt front as he carried her to the big leather club chair. He settled into it and positioned her knees on each side of his hips so that she straddled him.

Her blouse hung open displaying b.r.e.a.s.t.s that were rosy from the abrasion of his s.h.i.+rt. Her splayed legs revealed the glistening thicket of curls between her thighs. He was throbbing, and he began to pull her down so she could take him, but she resisted.

"You're not going to spank me first, are you?"

He groaned.

"Are you?" she repeated.

He surrendered to the inevitable. "Did you do something wrong?"

"I'm not supposed to let anyone in the house when my parents are gone."

"I guess I'll have to whale you, then, won't I?"

"No, don't!" Her eyelids drifted closed with excitement.

He was ready to explode and no longer in the mood to play games. Making up his mind not to take long with this, he pushed her down over his lap and shoved her skirt all the way to her waist. With her b.u.t.tocks bared to his gaze, he smacked the flat of his hand on her soft, round flesh.

He was a powerful man, but he carefully leashed his strength, giving her only a bit more than she wanted. She gasped and writhed beneath his blows, growing increasingly more excited.

As her b.u.t.tocks took on a faintly rosy hue, he thought of all the trouble his ex-wife was causing him. The late-night phone calls when she ripped his character to shreds, the legal ha.s.sles, that newspaper interview.

"Ouch! That's too hard!"

Once again the flat of his hand connected with her tender flesh. "Are you going to be good, darlin'?"

"Yes!"

"How good?"

"Ouch! Stop!"

"Tell me how good you're going to be."

"Good! I'll be good, dammit!"

He spanked her again. "No nasty little digs in the newspapers."

"All right. Stop!"

"No more late-night harangues on the telephone."

"You're ruining everything!"

He slipped his hand between her legs. "I don't think so." And then he lifted her.

She immediately impaled herself on him. "You son of a b.i.t.c.h."

He drove deep. "That's right, I'm a son of a b.i.t.c.h."

She rode him viciously. The phone on the desk began to ring, but they both ignored it. Harsh moans slipped from her throat as she grabbed his dark blond hair in her fists. He buried his face in her b.r.e.a.s.t.s while his fingers dug into her b.u.t.tocks.

The ringing stopped and the answering machine clicked on.

She threw back her head and yelled as she shattered.

This is Valerie Calebow. I can't come to the phone right now. If you leave a message, I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

The machine beeped and then spoke. "Congresswoman, it's Stu Blake. I'm sorry to be calling so late, but ..."

The voice droned on.

With a groan, Dan spilled himself inside her. She slumped against him as the message came to an end.

Beep.

4.

Dan opened the refrigerator door, pulled out a quart of milk, and unscrewed the cap. Behind him he heard Valerie coming into the kitchen of the house they had once shared. Because he knew it would irritate her, he lifted the milk container to his lips and took a swig.

"For G.o.d's sake, Dan, get a gla.s.s," she said in that snotty voice he hated.

He took another swig before he screwed the cap back on and returned the container to the refrigerator. Resting the side of his hip against the door, he studied her. She had scrubbed the makeup from her face, revealing her sharp bone structure with a nose that was a bit long but well balanced by a high, smooth forehead. Her light brown hair, free of the silver barrette, fell almost to her shoulders, and her teenybopper clothes had given way to a midnight blue peignoir set trimmed in black lace.

"Where'd you get the cheerleading jacket?"

"My secretary's daughter. I told her I was going to a costume party." She lit a cigarette, even though she knew he hated being around smoke.

"This escapade tonight crossed the boundary into creepy. Sixteen-year-old girls haven't turned me on since I was twelve."

She shrugged and exhaled. "It was different, that's all."

Not so different, he thought. In one way or another, all of Valerie's s.e.xual fantasies tended to lead toward male domination. Pretty d.a.m.n funny considering the fact that she was a Cla.s.s A ball buster. Unfortunately, the only person he could share the joke with was Valerie, and he knew she wouldn't laugh. Besides, she got all riled if he criticized any of these weird scenarios she set up, and they already had enough other things to fight about.

Her hand crept to her rear. She rubbed it through the dark blue silk and gazed at him with resentment. "You shouldn't have hit me so hard."

"Honey, I was holding back."

He could tell by her expression that she was trying to make up her mind whether to sink her teeth into him or not. Apparently she decided against it because she walked over to the small kitchen desk and began thumbing through the Filofax she had left there. "I don't have to be in Was.h.i.+ngton for a few more weeks. How's your schedule for the weekend?"

"I'll be at the Meadowlands. We're playing the Jets." He moved away from the refrigerator and took a banana from a stainless steel fruit bowl that looked like the terminal at Dulles.

She slipped on the pair of half-gla.s.ses that were lying on the desk and set her cigarette in a chunky black gla.s.s ashtray. "What about Thursday evening before you leave?"

"Meeting. Friday's all right, though."

"The vice president's going to be in town that night, and there's another reception."

"Wednesday night if we make it after midnight."

"That looks like it'll work. Except-" She slammed the book shut. "I'll have my period." Slipping off her gla.s.ses, she rubbed the bridge of her nose, took another drag from her cigarette, and said briskly, "We'll work around it. We have before."

"We've been divorced for nearly a year, Val. Don't you think it's time we talked about putting an end to this?"

"There's no need to end it yet. We agreed this would be the best arrangement until one of us finds someone else."

"Or until we kill each other, whichever comes first."

She ignored his crack and showed that rare vulnerability that always got to him. "I just-I just can't imagine how to go about it. I'm attracted to powerful men. How am I supposed to tell someone like that I won't sleep with him until I've seen a complete workup of his blood chemistry?"

He tossed the banana peel in the sink. "s.e.x in the nineties. It makes for strange bedfellows."

"No one should have to screw an ex-spouse just because that ex-spouse happens to be HIV negative." She stabbed out her cigarette in the ashtray.

"Amen to that." He disliked the arrangement a lot more than she did, but whenever he tried to break it off, she made him feel like a heel. Once he found his baby-makin' woman, however, he was putting an end to this.

"We're both too smart to play s.e.xual roulette," she said.

"And you're crazy about my body."

She didn't have much of a sense of humor these days, and his wisecrack set her off. Her nostrils began to breathe fire, and before long she was accusing him of gross insensitivity, reckless behavior, a bad disposition, not caring about anything but winning football games, and emotional dishonesty.

Since she was pretty much on target, he tuned her out while he polished off the banana. In all fairness, he knew her problem was worse than his, and the fact that he felt sorry for her was one of the reasons he went along with this sick arrangement. As a female member of the House of Representatives, she was judged by a stricter moral standard than her male colleagues. The voters might forgive some hounding around from their congressman, but they sure wouldn't forgive it from a woman. For someone who liked s.e.x as much as Valerie, but didn't have either a husband or a man she cared about, it was a definite problem. Besides, she was one of the few honest legislators in Was.h.i.+ngton, and he figured it was his patriotic duty.

Not that there weren't some benefits for him. He'd had so much free s.e.x during his early playing days that he'd lost his appet.i.te for promiscuity. He also wasn't stupid, and he had no interest in taking chances with groupies. But despite Valerie's kinky little scenarios, s.e.x hadn't been much fun for a long time.

He knew now that the two of them had been incompatible from the beginning, but they had generated so much s.e.xual heat that neither of them had noticed until they'd made the mistake of getting married. Valerie had been initially fascinated by his rough edges and fierce aggressiveness, the same qualities that had later driven her crazy. And her breeding and sophistication had been irresistible to a kid who'd grown up dirt-poor in backwoods Alabama. But he had soon discovered that she had no sense of humor and no desire for the family life he craved.

Her latest tirade against him was beginning to wind down, and he remembered that he had a score of his own to settle. "While we're airing our grievances here, Valerie, I'm going to dish out one of my own. If you give any more interviews like that one last week, your lawyer's going to get a phone call from mine, and this won't be a friendly divorce any longer."

She refused to meet his eyes. "It was a mistake."

"It's like I tell the team. There's no such thing as mistakes-only a lack of foresight."

He had been intimidating people with his physical size for so long that it had become automatic, and he instinctively moved closer until he was hovering over her. "I don't appreciate public discussions of our breakup, and I'm not crazy about having anybody but sportswriters call me a borderline psychopath."

She began to fiddle with the lace on the front of her negligee. "It was an off-the-record remark. The reporter should never have printed it."

"You shouldn't have made the remark in the first place. From now on when anybody asks you about our divorce, you restrict yourself to the same two words I always use when I get interviewed. 'Irreconcilable differences.' "

"You sound like you're threatening me." She was trying to work up a good lather, but she couldn't quite manage it, so he knew she was feeling guilty.

"I'm just reminding you that a lot of men in this town aren't going to keep voting for a woman that bad-mouths an ex-husband who once completed twenty-nine pa.s.ses against the 49ers' defense in a single afternoon."

"All right! I'm sorry. I'd just talked to you on the phone, and you'd irritated me."

"Valerie, I irritate you all the time, so don't use that as an excuse to go for my jugular."

She wisely changed the subject. "I heard Bert's funeral was quite entertaining. It's too bad all his old mistresses weren't there so they could have seen that dog pee on his coffin." Valerie smiled in her thin-lipped way. "There is a G.o.d after all. And She watches out for Her own."

Dan refused to get into a debate with Valerie about Bert, especially when he knew he was on shaky ground. Men liked Bert, but women didn't. He had been too free with his hands, too quick with the raunchy joke and patronizing comment. That didn't go over well with women like Valerie. It didn't go over all that well with Dan, either, but Bert had been the boss so he'd kept his mouth shut.

"It wasn't funny, Val. A man died, and his daughter managed to turn his funeral into a circus."