Sealed With a Kiss

Chapter 5

To her chagrin, Rufus arrived wearing a long-sleeved sport shirt with black jeans under a light overcoat. His dreamy eyes took her in from head to foot, apparently appreciating the svelte curves revealed by her burnt orange knit tube dress. His grin didn’t reach his eyes, she noticed. Leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his broad chest, he told her without a trace of a smile and in deadly earnest, “Don’t you play with fire, honey. I wouldn’t want you to get singed.”

She had an awful feeling of defeat, but only temporarily, because she knew that her sharp mind rarely deserted her. She pushed one of the kitchen chairs toward him, hopefully gave him a level stare, and asked in what she had cultivated as her sweetest voice, “You wouldn’t be the culprit, would you?” A bystander would have thought that she was seriously seeking valuable information. “You usually back off when things warm up. So I don’t have to worry about you, do I?” But she quickly realized that Rufus was not in a joshing mood. She saw his body stiffen and his muscles tense and thought of a big cat about to spring.

He rounded the table. “You like to tease, do you? Well…” She headed him off, sensing something subtly different about him. It wasn’t the annoyance; she’d seen him practically furious. It was the steel, a street kind of steel that a man reserves for his true adversary.

She gulped. “I’m not teasing you, I’ve never…”

“I’m not asking you; I’m telling you. You didn’t wear that hot little number all day long, now, did you? And I’ll bet you weren’t wearing it when you called me.”

She backed up a little. Where was that suave, genteel man with the iron control? This Rufus seemed to be itching for friction, to need it. But she was doggoned if she’d let him intimidate her.

“Your reputation doesn’t include being a bully, so be yourself and sit back down.”

His steely, yet strangely gentle fingers sent fiery ripples spiraling down her arm. “Don’t play with me, Naomi. You poured yourself into that thing to get my attention.” He grinned, and she realized for the first time that his grin did not necessarily signify amusement. “You’ve got my attention. I told you that I had no intention of pursuing this…this whatever-you-want-to-call-it between us, and you assumed that I meant I wouldn’t take you to bed. That shows how much you know about what goes on between a man and a woman.”

He was right. She knew very little about it, but enough that she sensed the danger of her galloping attraction to him. She scoffed at him, pretending amusement.

“You do fancy yourself, don’t you? Well, I want you to understand something, Mr. Meade: I don’t knuckle under for any man.”

She watched with frank fascination while Rufus walked away from her, turned, and placed his hands on his hips. “Naomi, only a fool would wrap himself in a red sheet and go out to meet a thousand-pound bull. I don’t fancy myself; but baby, you do fancy me.” Then he added in a dangerously soft voice, “I’d rescue you from a burning building, Naomi, but if you push me another fraction of an inch, I’ll have that dress off of you in a split second. And before you can bat one of your big eyes, you’ll be begging for mercy. Believe it!”

Tiny shivers skittered from her head to her toes and a rapidly spiraling heat suffused her as she imagined what he would be like if she dared him. She stared in rapt attention at his hypnotic face, taking in his serious manner, thrilled at the temptation of him standing before her, tense and flagrantly male, excited in a way that she had never been before. She didn’t wonder or even care what he thought as she stood there looking at him, trembling. Time had no meaning as her gaze traveled up his long, lean frame, pausing briefly on his powerful chest and strong corded neck and reluctantly coming to rest in the turbulent pools of fire that his eyes had become. Vaguely, she realized she needed to compose herself, but a feeling of helplessness nearly overcame her. She rimmed her lips with the tip of her tongue and, with what sense she had left, turned to leave the room.

Rufus narrowed his eyes at what was one of the most lush examples of honest feminine need he’d ever seen. He reached for her, and she moved to him without caution or care, like a moth to a glowing flame, nail to magnet. He gathered her to him with stunning force, and as if it was what she needed, she moved up on tiptoe, curled her arms around his neck, and let her long artist’s fingers weave through the tight black curls at the base of his head. He brushed her lips briefly, molded them softly to his, and held her head while he took his pleasure. Dimly, he realized that she was out of her league when she felt him growing against her and sagged in his arms.

Gently he lifted her and pressed his closed lips to her breast, hating that offending dress that separated him from her flesh. “Rufus. Oh, Rufus.” Was she begging him for more, or pleading for mercy? He couldn’t tell which, but he knew he was rapidly reaching the point where he’d need awesome self-control. He lowered her to her feet, held her away from him, and looked at her. She was as shaken as he, and his behavior annoyed him, because he didn’t want to mislead her or hurt her. And he didn’t trust himself to have an affair with her, after that kiss, which had been even more powerful, more punishing that the other that they had shared, he wouldn’t count on his ability to keep his head straight. He moved away from her, certain from the look of her that she wanted him even closer. And he was pretty sure now that her experience with men had been minimal. But what was he supposed to do while she stood there, apparently absentminded, rubbing the spot where his lips had been? He swore softly and pulled her to him again.

“I want you, Naomi.” He spoke in low guttural tones, the quiver in his voice a sure sign—if she had known it—that he could be putty in her hands. But she didn’t know it, he discovered, and she replied with the volley of an ingénue.

“Please let me go. That doesn’t flatter me, Rufus. I told you, it’s not going to happen now or ever.” If she had been a hot poker in his bare hand, he could hardly have put her away from him more quickly. He had almost made a fool of himself over her, and she’d turned him off, just like that. How could a woman go up in smoke in a man’s arms one minute and arrogantly tell him to get lost the next?

He wiped his mouth symbolically with the back of his hand and allowed her to witness one of his indecipherable grins. “Better stop playing it so close to the edge with me; the next time you behave the way you did tonight, we may both regret it. And Naomi,” he chided gently, almost affectionately, “you deserve better than you asked for just then, and I should have given you better than you got. But I’m human; try to remember that, will you?” There’s something about her that’s different, he thought, but couldn’t name it. Shrugging it off, he reached both hands toward the ceiling and grabbed fists full of air, stretching his big frame like the great cats for which he’d been nicknamed.

Naomi admitted to herself that her passionate exchange with Rufus was a humbling experience, and she had the guilty feeling that she’d brought some of it on herself. She knew how she looked in that dress, but she didn’t intend to worry about it. His last remark convinced her that he really was very likeable, that she could trust him with herself anyplace and at any time. Frankly observing him, she could almost pinpoint the second that he decided to change the tenor of the conversation.

“All right, let’s get started,” he directed. “I’m sure some of the fraternities would be glad to join this; I can get my frat to go along and you might contact your sorority.”

“What’s yours?” she asked. “I’m a Delta.” She shook with laughter at his stunned disbelief that they belonged to brother-sister Greek letter societies. Her Delta to his Omega. Stranger things had happened, she reminded him, hinting that at last they had found common ground.

He feigned innocence. “You’re joking! What do you mean, ‘at last’? What kind of ground was that we found when we were setting each other on fire a minute ago? As an English teacher, you should take a page from Shakespeare, ‘to thine own self be true.’”

She had backed away from involvements, from attachments that she would have liked to pursue, because she didn’t trust a man to love and accept her as she was. And she paid for it in loneliness. Even now, she chose craftily not to reply to his message but to the package in which he wrapped it. “Mr. Meade,” she queried, “where is it written that you’re not a man unless you mention sex at least once in every sentence?”

“Who mentioned sex? I was talking about whatever it is between us that draws us together, no matter how much we swear we don’t want it. I know what I’m backing away from, Naomi, and I know why. But do you?”