If Only You Knew

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“No, you’re not. The deal was you spend the night with me.”

“What? The deal was we’d have sex. We did. Now I’m going home.” No way could she stay the night with him. She didn’t think she could take more of his kisses and caresses tonight, and she knew she’d never receive them again.

“Stay the night, Tonya. Please,” he almost begged.

“Look, Mr. Harrington—”

“I think we’re beyond formalities, Tonya,” he countered knowingly.

“Okay, Carlton. I can’t stay the night here. I have to go home.”

“Why can’t you stay?”

She couldn’t believe that he was badgering her about staying the night. He got what he wanted. So did she. Why couldn’t Carlton just let her go? She tried to think of a good reason, anything besides the I-really-liked-making-love-to-you-and-now-I’m-running-scared-before-you-kick-me-to-the-curb excuse running through her head.

“My grandmother, she’s recovering from a stroke, remember? I usually spend the weekends at home with her, but I asked Sue, her home-health aide, to stay with her today, because I had to work.” She gave him a pointed glare before continuing.

“I have to pay her time and a half under the table when she does favors like this, and I can’t afford to have her spend the night with my grandmother.” Grabbing her panties, she started to put them on and winced in pain as she tried to lift her sore leg.

He walked over to capture her hand in his, stilling her movement. “Call her and tell her that you will pay her triple. I’ll pay for it. You’re not leaving here tonight.”

She let out a sharp, sarcastic laugh. “Do you even realize how insulting you are? I’m not a whore. You can’t pay for me for the evening, Mr. Harrington! You can keep your money. I can pay for my own grandmother’s care. I’m not going to neglect her for the entire evening so that I can spend the night in your bed!”

His hand moved from her hand to her face. He caressed her cheek. “I’m just not handling this well at all, am I?” He looked almost vulnerable. “What I mean is, I really want to spend the night with you in my arms. We don’t have to have sex again. In fact, given the fact that you’re sore, we probably shouldn’t. I don’t want this to end yet. So I’m asking you, please, let me cover your grandmother’s care for the evening. Please stay here with me tonight.”

She sighed heavily. “Carlton, what am I supposed to tell my grandmother? That I’m spending the night with a man?”

“Tell her that you decided to go out with some girl friends. I don’t know. Just stay with me. Please?” He gave her another one of his soul-stirring kisses and she was lost.

It’s only one night, she reasoned. She could allow herself to be loved by him for one night, and then on Monday, she could get transferred to another department and keep the memories of what transpired between them locked away.

When the kiss ended, she had to take two deep breaths just to focus.

“I’ll tell you what,” he began. He appeared unsure that his kiss had changed her mind. “You use the phone on the nightstand there to call and make arrangements for your grandmother and I’ll run you a nice, hot bath. You’re probably a little sore and achy and the warmth of the water should help. Is that okay?”

Sighing, she nodded. She had never lied to her grandmother before, but she wanted to spend the night with Carlton more than she wanted anything in a long time. There was no way Latonya was going to tell her grandmother that she was spending the night with a man. Her God-fearing grandmother would think that she had made some kind of mistake raising her. Latonya could hear her grandmother’s response, Peanut, I’m going to pray to Jesus for your soul. What are you thinking staying with some man all night! No, Gran didn’t need to know this.

Latonya picked up the phone and called home. Sue was more than happy to make three times her pay and told her not to worry about her grandmother. Latonya wanted to talk to her, but she was sleeping already. Sometimes, after a frustrating day of relearning how to do things that she at one time had no problem doing for herself, her grandmother took to bed early.

She hung up the phone just as Carlton came strutting out of the bathroom. He was still very naked, and one look at his chiseled form made her glad she decided to stay. She remembered just how each and every one of those muscles felt against her skin, as he held her and stroked her. She let her eyes drink him in. Starting from the top of his wavy black hair to his feet. She stopped there and admired the way each bone, each muscle, each vein seemed perfectly placed. She never knew she had a thing for feet. As her eyes trailed up his muscular thighs, she blinked and realized that hanging around Carlton would no doubt introduce her to many more of her hidden fetishes. Have. Mercy, she thought when she met his dark, smoldering eyes again and saw his desire.

He smiled and her heart jumped. “Your bubble bath awaits you.”

Why is he being so personable? If she had known that sex would have turned him into a decent human being, she would have put him out of his misery months ago. That would’ve meant that she would have been subjected to his sweet, sweet kisses a long time ago.

Grinning, she walked into the bathroom, took off her shirt and underwear and stepped slowly into the deep bubble bath.

Latonya jumped when Carlton stepped into the tub with her and he had to laugh. The tub was more than big enough to fit the two of them with room to spare. And he was nowhere near ready to be away from her yet.

“I figured I’d join you and help you out,” he offered as he poured some of the body-wash liquid into his hands and began to lather her skin. He took a moment to massage her shoulders.

“Umm…that’s nice.” She leaned back into his arms.

Glad that she had relaxed a little and didn’t seem as antsy as she was when she was trying to leave, Carlton exhaled. He realized that she probably felt conflicted about what happened between them. A woman didn’t wait until she was twenty-four years old to have sex and take it lightly. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel some sort of guilt about what had happened between them. It had been too special to him and he wanted it to be special for her as well.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“I’m feeling okay.”

“Really? Better than you were a few minutes ago when you were trying to make your great escape?”

She turned and glanced up at him. “Ha. Ha. Now you’ve got jokes. Okay. I freaked out for a minute. This is new to me. I’ve never felt…like this before. I’ve never done anything like this. And I sort of lost it for a minute and wanted to run.”

Latonya’s wanting to run from her feelings disturbed him, and he didn’t want to put a finger on why. He only knew that if she had left she would have been taking a part of him with her. As new as it all was, he knew that much for certain.

“This is new to me, too. And I can tell you that it was special. What we shared meant more to me than anything. You don’t have to be freaked out about it or feel guilty about it. It was beautiful, and I don’t want it to be a one-night thing. I want more.”

Carlton waited for some response from Latonya, but all he got in return was her even, steady breathing.

Chapter 5

He held her for a moment and marveled over the fact that the one time he decided to pour out his heart to a woman, she fell asleep. He reasoned that maybe that was a good thing. If she almost bolted when they made love, he wondered how fast she would run once she figured out how much he really wanted her.

She looked so peaceful that he almost didn’t want to wake her. He had never seen her so rested and content; it made her appear even more beautiful. As if that were possible.

Carlton didn’t know what he was going to do with her. He still wanted her, damn it. He knew there was no way he’d be able to work side by side with her each day and pretend they’d never had this night together. The feel of her, look of her, taste of her, would haunt him for the rest of his life. For the first time, he wanted, no, needed to have a woman in his life long-term.

“Wake up, sleepyhead,” he said, running his hand down a slick arm. “We’re going to turn into prunes if we don’t get out of this water.”

Her eyes fluttered open at the sound of his deep voice as she turned to look up at him and smiled.

Together, they stood and stepped out of the deep bathtub. Stretching her arms, she stopped suddenly, embarrassed by her nakedness. She wrapped her arms around herself, and averted her gaze when she noticed him looking at her with want. He was barely aware of the water dripping down his own body, because he was so caught up in the beads of moisture trailing her shapely form. The way she had her arms wrapped in front of her only made her luscious breasts even more pronounced.

Latonya lifted her head slightly, and Carlton noticed that she was giving him an appraising glance as well.

“Um…can you pass me something to dry off with and then, um…”

He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist, since parts of him suddenly came to attention at the sight of her hot, wet body. “Would you like some privacy?”

“Umm…yeah…if you don’t mind.”

Letting his eyes drink their fill of the beads of water trickling down her lush toffee skin, he smiled. “Well, it’s not as if I haven’t seen you already, Tonya.”

Since it was obvious Carlton wasn’t going to leave, she helped herself from a shelf lined with plush Egyptian cotton bath sheets. As he watched, she quickly wiped herself dry and then wrapped it around her, covering everything from her breasts to the middle of her thighs. Each stroke of the Egyptian cotton on her body made him think of his own hands caressing her. The bath sheet didn’t cover up enough to make him forget what it was like to have her in his arms. He wanted to be the one wrapped around her.

When they returned to the bedroom, she sat down on the bed and then glanced back at him. “Do you have a T-shirt or something I could put on to, um…sleep in?”

He bit back a grumble. He didn’t want her in a T-shirt. He wanted as many memories of her beautiful body as his mind could store. But he could tell she was nervous and rather shy about displaying herself, so he dug out one of his plain white T-shirts from a drawer and handed it to her.

She took off the towel, put on the T-shirt, pulled back the comforter and got into his huge brass bed.

She stifled a yawn as her eyes fluttered—he could tell she was tired. She snuggled under the covers and he wasted no time snuggling up behind her. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close and tight. She relaxed into his embrace with an ease that surprised him, and soon all he heard was her soft, even breathing.

Latonya didn’t know people could go from deep sleep to passionate kissing in a matter of seconds, but Carlton made her a believer when she awoke to his tentative pecks. He seemed almost asleep himself. But all it took was a hint of a response from her to fully awaken his passion. When she opened her mouth to him, he mercilessly plundered it. In her half-sleep state she couldn’t tell his tongue from her own. All she knew for sure was that she couldn’t get enough of what he offered.

And his hands, they must have memorized every inch of her body and every erogenous zone. First, he caressed her breasts, teasing her nipples with one hand and cupping her behind to press close to his rock-hard erection with the other.

Letting out a soft sigh, she spread her legs and moved her hips so that she could somehow make his erection touch the core of her, which was throbbing uncontrollably. She needed to feel him inside of her again; her body still craved him. She felt as if she couldn’t wait to have him fill her.

She didn’t have to wait long. Carlton rolled over on his back, using the arm that was cupping her to lift her on top of him. She straddled him and he helped her to ease herself onto his shaft. She stared down at him in momentary shock as she took the length of him inside of her and got used to the size of him in the new position. He sat up, lifting the T-shirt she wore and throwing it to the side.

“I want you to ride me, baby. Can you do that for me?”

Closing her eyes, she caught the rhythm. She moved up and down and back and forth, slowly at first and then with more speed. She shifted her pelvis until she could feel parts of her open, tighten and release around him that she didn’t even know could tighten, much less release.

Soon his hands were no longer on her hips, but on her breasts. He reached up and squeezed the heavy flesh with urgency. Her nipples felt tight, straining against her skin. She let her own hands explore his rippled chest as she rode him.

Soon her sex began to tighten and contract in a way that made her sure she had lost all her rhythm. “Oh, oh, oh, Carlton.”

“Yes, baby, yes, baby, let it out, baby.”

She let out a loud scream before she collapsed against his chest. She only hoped that, since the mansion was so huge, Jillian or any of the other servants hadn’t heard her cry out. He gently ran his hands down her back before flipping her over. Still inside her, his strong erection moved slowly. He suckled on her neck as he worked his hips, repeatedly pulling himself all the way out of her and burying himself to the hilt. Each move left her shaking with pleasure. She had never known so much joy.

She lifted her hips to meet each of his thrusts, and she closed her eyes tightly when she felt herself losing it again. She tried not to scream again, but the orgasm that was building ever so slowly was just too intense.

“I will never be able to get enough of you. What are you doing to me?” he grunted in her ear before he took her earlobe into his mouth. “That’s right, baby, let it out. Let me know that you like this as much as I do, because I love it.”

Just as she could take no more, he bent his head and caught all her sound with his kiss. She found herself moaning and whimpering instead of kissing. Soon he shook with his own release.

In the aftermath of lovemaking, as he cuddled her in his arms, she wondered how she was ever going to work with him after knowing what he could do to her body, her mind.

He planted kisses on her forehead, cradled her to him and let out a deeply satisfied sigh.