Читать книгу Dearest Enemy - Nan Ryan, Nan Ryan - Страница 11

July 1861

Creamy white flowers covered the rosebushes that grew just outside the open floor-to-ceiling windows. The fragile blossoms undulated in a gentle breeze blowing out of the south. The rhythmic shimmering stirred the flowers' seductive fragrance, sending the subtle scent wafting through the windows and into the spacious ground floor bedchamber.

“Umm, smell that,” purred a voluptuous naked woman lying stretched out on the silk-sheeted bed, arms flung above her head, midnight hair spilling across the lace-trimmed pillows. “Like the sweetest of honey.”

“I smell you,” said the man who, shedding the last of his clothes, came down onto the bed beside the woman.

“And how do I smell?” she asked, turning on her side and raking long fingernails through the coal-black hair covering his broad, muscled chest.

“Hot. Pungent. Like a highly aroused female in need of immediate sex,” he said, unworried that she might take offense.

No chance of that. Mitch Longley knew her too well. Mrs. Dawn Bell Thompson Bond Merriweather, a wealthy and beautiful twice-widowed, once-divorced brunette who was accepted in Washington society mainly because she was extremely wealthy, had let him know the night they met exactly what she wanted from him.

As they had danced in the ballroom of this very mansion—one of three grand residences she owned—she'd wasted no time in explaining why Mitch had been invited to the evening's glittering soiree.

“Admiral Longley,” she had said, “since the afternoon when I was walking past the War Department with a good friend and you and I very nearly collided, I have thought of little else but you.”

“Madam,” Mitch had reminded her, “the incident happened only yesterday afternoon.”

She'd laughed gaily and said, “Well, you can't very well expect a lady to live in torture forever, now can you, Admiral?”

“I'm afraid I don't quite follow.”

“Don't you?” she said, and none-too-subtly insinuated her chiffon-gowned knee between his. Her gloved hand firmly urging his head down, she'd put her lips against his ear and whispered, “I want you to make love to me. Tonight. Here in my home. In my bed. After my guests leave. Or before. It's up to you. We can go to my suite right now if you like. It's just down the hall.” She pulled back to judge his reaction.

Mitch Longley was unfazed. Hers was not the first, nor would it be the last, decidedly unladylike proposition he had received from a spoiled, desirable woman. He made no misstep. His handsome face did not change. She might have been commenting on the weather for all that registered in his continuing calm demeanor.

Taken aback, Dawn said, “Perhaps you still don't fully understand me, Admiral. I am suggesting that—”

“I'm not titillated by the prospect of making love to a woman while she's entertaining a houseful of people.” He smoothly danced his brash hostess to the edge of the floor and deposited her there. Speaking loudly enough for others to hear, he thanked her for the dance and for the evening. Dawn Merriweather's face fell with disappointment.

Then Mitch leaned close and whispered in her ear, “Get rid of them. I'll be back at midnight. If you're not alone, don't expect me to stay.”

Without another word, Mitchell B. Longley, wealthy Maryland native, Union naval officer, graduate of the Naval Academy at Annapolis, class of '48, turned and left, with Dawn Merriweather staring after him.

When Mitch returned to the mansion at the stroke of midnight, a uniformed butler admitted him into the silent house and directed him to a set of closed double doors at the end of the wide downstairs corridor.

Pausing before those doors, Mitch raised his hand, then lowered it without knocking. He walked into the white-and-blue-decorated suite and closed the door behind him. She was not in the spacious sitting room, where huge white sofas and overstuffed blue easy chairs rested before a white marble fireplace. Mitch crossed the room. He went directly to the open connecting doors, stepped inside the candlelit bedroom and saw her.

The beautiful Dawn Merriweather, in a virginal white dressing gown, with her lustrous black hair falling loose around her shoulders, stood beside the big feather bed.

“I thought perhaps you weren't coming,” she said, seductively running a thumb and forefinger down the lapel of her shimmering robe to call his attention to the rigid nipples pressing proudly against the shiny fabric.

“You knew very well I would come,” he said. “Take that thing off.” He gestured to her garment.

“No,” she said, letting her arms fall to her sides. “You take it off, Admiral.”

Mitch shook his head and turned to leave.

“Wait! Come back. It's off! The robe's off!” she said, frantically yanking at the sash and sending the slippery covering to the carpeted floor.

Mitch stopped, turned and smiled. She was naked, her voluptuous body as beautiful as her face. She was Venus di Milo in the flesh, yet this goddess of love and beauty had arms with which to hold him.

In seconds Mitch was as naked as she. In minutes they were atop her feather bed going at each other in a no-holds-barred frenzy of raw sexual hunger. Mitch learned on that very first night that Mrs. Merriweather was insatiable. And that, not surprisingly, she was a highly experienced lover who was able to teach him a trick or two.

Now on this hot July afternoon a month after they'd met, the delectable Dawn sat astride the prostrate Mitch and aggressively rode him, determined to keep him hard and hot and here inside her. Her heavy breasts swaying with her slow undulating movements, midnight hair whipping around her face, she gazed steadily into his hooded green eyes and praised his prowess as a lover.

Mitch knew all her games. He knew exactly what she was up to on this particular afternoon. He had informed her the minute he arrived that he could stay for only an hour. He'd gotten his orders. He was to report to the Washington navy yard to board the USS Pawnee at 4:00 p.m. By dusk the Union warship would sail with the tide to Alexandria, Virginia.

Prolonged lovemaking was enjoyable. Still, Mitch had no choice but to take matters into his own hands and bring them both to a hasty release. He rolled up into a sitting position, slipped his hands beneath Dawn's bent knees, pressed them to his sides and firmly clasped the twin cheeks of her buttocks. While she anxiously hugged his head to her breasts, Mitch pumped into her with a fury.

“Nooo!” she protested when her climax began. “Not yet, Mitch, I…I…ooh, yes, yes!”