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you're just looking for a way to make me quit.
Either way, you've accomplished it. You win." She handed him her script.
But he stared coldly at her outstretched hand. "We're almost two weeks into rehearsals," he
said. "I don't replace cast members."
"No, you just give them hell, don't you, Cul?" she asked wistfully.
"You wanted the part, darling," he said mockingly. "So did Hadison."
"Apparently that makes us guilty of some horrible crime," she replied.
"I've told you I'm sorry I asked for the part. God knows, I'll never make the same mistake
again. But if it means causing David to suffer, I'll "
"He fluffed his lines," he said shortly. "So he caught hell. He'll catch it again, if he does it again.
I want perfection here, not slipshod acting. I'll rail out anyone who doesn't do his job right, and
that includes every actor in the cast."
"You've been singling us out!" she shot back.
"Maybe the two of you should pay more attention to practicing your lines," he said venomously,
"instead of wallowing around in bed!"
She slapped him, quickly and deftly, without bothering to think of the consequences.
He didn't even flinch. He laid the pen down very carefully and caught her around the waist,
jerking her against the length of his hard body.
"I've been waiting for that," he breathed, looking down at her.
"Waiting, praying for a sign of your passion again..."
His mouth crushed down on hers, and all the years fell away. All of them, one by one by one,
until she was a girl again and it was spring outside.
"Harder," he whispered against her trembling mouth. "Kiss me hard, the way you used to when
we'd lie together in the park, on the grass, and you'd beg for my hands under your blouse. Do
you remember, Bett?"
She did, she did, and her mouth was telling him so. She went on tiptoe, her arms clinging, her lips
opening to the searching penetration of his tongue. She was on fire, blazing out of control, and
his mouth was hard and warm and tasted of cigarette smoke and great passion.
He lifted his head, breathing roughly, his eyes searching hers in the hot silence. "Six years," he
whispered, shaken. "And I touch you, and they all vanish. And I want you, even more than I did
then."
She couldn't speak, couldn't breathe. Without another word, he bent, lifting her into his arms.
"We can't make love in comfort on the stage floor, Bett," he breathed with rough amusement,
"but there's a soft, long couch in the office I'm using. Soft enough, and long enough, that we can
lie on it together and pretend that we're as young as we were then."
"Cul..." she began in a whisper.
"No, don't argue, darling," he whispered back, brushing her soft mouth with his as he elbowed
his way into the office and kicked the door shut. "Just let me kiss you for a few minutes, and
take the edge off this damned hunger. I've almost gone out of my mind since the other night,
Bett, I could taste you in my sleep! I want you, God, I want you!"
She wanted him, too, desperately, but it was only going to make things worse. She was still a
virgin, although he wouldn't believe that, and she didn't want the complication of trying to
manage an affair with him. She still loved him, damn him! Still, after all the years, all the
humiliation. And she wanted him with a woman's hunger. But none of it was going to be enough!
"Cul, don't," she pleaded as he laid her gently on the long couch, his eyes running hungrily over
the tight jeans and black blouse she was wearing.
"Yes," he said simply, lying down with her. "It's been a long time, but I haven't forgotten how
your eyes cloud when you want me."
"We never went all the way," she reminded him shakily.
"You were a virgin, darling," he whispered. His fingers ran across one firm, soft breast and she
trembled. "I couldn't take that from you, not when you might have married. Your husband
would have wanted to be the first."
"But now?" she queried.
His hand cupped her warmly, his eyes watching the betraying motion of her body as he caressed
her. "Now, you're twenty-five and no longer a virgin. And presumably, not wanting marriage.
Now it's different. We can have each other. We can... love."
"Sex," she whispered, "is not love."
His eyes wandered back up to hers, and they glittered like sun-soaked leaves. "What we'll do
together won't be a purely physical joining.
There's too much between us for simple lust, and you know it." He bent his blond head and his
mouth opened on her breast through the thin fabric. She arched, moaning.
"You cried the first time I did this," he whispered as he nuzzled the warm softness of her body.
"We were lying under an oak tree in the park. I kissed you, and before you realized what I was
doing, I had your breasts bare. My God, you were so beautiful! You started to protest, but
before you could, I put my mouth here, like this." He kissed her there, softly, easing his hand
under the blouse to lift it slowly, sensuously out of the way. Then his mouth found bare skin and
a hard, throbbing nub, and her hands tangled fiercely in the hair at the back of his head and
ground his mouth against her.
"It's the same," he whispered, stripping her out of the blouse even as his mouth found her again.
"It's just the same, only you're more beautiful now, and you want me more. Help me..."
She found the buttons of his shirt and fumbled them open, helping him out of it. There had only
been one time like this, that magical day in the deserted park, when they'd held each other so
close and felt skin against skin and moaned with the aching need to have each other completely.
But he'd held back, and none of her pleading words had swayed him.
"Yes," he whispered, grinding her breasts against the hair-roughened warmth of his chest.
"God!"
Her legs were moving under his, she was on fire. It had been so long, so long, and she'd needed
him so, and now all at once she could have him. He wanted her, he still wanted her!
"Now," she whispered mindlessly, her hands on his chest, lower, touching him in remembered
ways, ways that drove him wild. "Now, please. Please."
"All of me?" he whispered back, lifting her hips up against his.
"All of you," she agreed, shaking.
His hands slid into the waistband of her jeans, onto her bare buttocks, his legs shifted between
hers. "Look at me," he whispered.
She opened her drugged eyes as he eased down over her, letting her feel his hunger in an
intimacy that ripped her apart with need. She cried out, a strangled, high-pitched little cry that
had all of heaven in it, and he watched her with a face gone rigid in passion.
He moved against her roughly. "Now?"
"Yes," she ground out with a moan.
His lips parted as he watched her, and his hips ground into hers in a slow, sensuous motion.
"Like this?" he breathed.
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