Strapless. Leigh Riker

      Darcie made a pouty face. “Gee, now I’m losing my hard-on.”

      Merrick didn’t respond. Apparently tired of talk, he hauled her tight against his chest and kissed her. Darcie felt his teeth push hard at her lips, then his tongue entered her mouth and she went limp in his arms. She was such an easy mark tonight, it was pathetic.

      Her knees weakened. Her thighs loosened. Desire oozed from every pore.

      When Merrick started breathing fast, so did Darcie. His hands were all over her now, pulling up her sweater, then with one deft flick of a finger, opening her bra. Darcie’s breasts spilled free. Or so she liked to think. They weren’t really big enough to spill or jiggle with any degree of success.

      With a growl he palmed her breasts, and another streak of fire flashed through Darcie so fast she thought she’d eaten too big a wad of the wasabi—Japanese horseradish—that Merrick always encouraged her to try. It sure opened the sinuses. His touch, his mouth on her, did the same now to every orifice of her frustrated body.

      Darcie fumbled at his belt. If only she didn’t have these reservations, and she didn’t mean about the hotel room they were in. She pushed away her misgivings but couldn’t manage to deal with Merrick’s fly.

      “Move a little. I can’t unzip your pants.”

      He eased back. “Do it quick.”

      The zipper jammed. “Merrick…”

      “Quicker.”

      He pushed off her skirt, tossing it aside. Next her panties flew across the room, landing on a chair like one of her grandmother’s tea cozies. Except that Gran was more the sort for peach schnapps or Jell-O shooters. Darcie slipped off her shoes, he did too, and then they were naked. Phew. The air-conditioned room felt suddenly too cool, and her nipples hardened into knots—not love knots exactly, but oh well.

      Legs entangled, they stumbled toward the king-size bed. Darcie hit the pillow-top mattress and Merrick rolled beside her. He took her in his hard, health-club muscled arms and kissed her with a hint of tongue. Not bad. Maybe she’d overlook his earlier rejection.

      “You hot yet, babe?”

      Darcie gasped. “I’d say so. Yes.”

      “Then let’s do it. That’s why we’re here.”

      His words lacked something, the stuff of her mother’s dreams—Janet would agree if Darcie ever talked about her “love” life, which she didn’t—but it was the twenty-first century and knights in armor on white horses were long gone. Men were…men. In the postsexual revolution, in the middle of a societal upheaval littered with women like Greta who had no partners, Darcie took her pleasure where she could find it.

      “Ready?” he said.

      “Move right in.”

      Merrick braced himself above her. Silently, she opened her legs, and without another word he slid inside her, deep and full.

      “Man,” he murmured in obvious appreciation.

      “Woman,” she managed because she wouldn’t let him be a Neanderthal alone.

      He started moving and she stopped caring about Janet’s plans for her, her own dubious future at Wunderthings or some elusive happiness she couldn’t quite grasp. Eagerly, she joined his rhythm. When orgasm caught them, it hit hard and fast—first Merrick, then Darcie. Nothing new there, either, in a whole day of nothing new. Merrick Lowell wasn’t her dream, but even as an optimist she’d never had that kind of luck—or for that matter, a mutual climax. He would do. They would. For now.

      Until the “right man” came along.

      Like that would happen any time soon.

      “He’s lying, Darcie. Don’t believe a word he tells you.”

      In Claire Spencer’s opinion, for which she was highly paid in her job, Merrick Lowell was a bigger problem for Darcie than Greta Hinckley. Worried about her friend, on Tuesday night Claire watched Darcie pace the living room of her grandmother’s apartment, which Darcie shared. Roommates? The odd couple, she thought. The duplex apartment, perched high on the Jersey Palisades in the same building where Claire lived with her husband two floors down, overlooked the Hudson River but, too tired to care about the view, she couldn’t enjoy it. Even here, she imagined she could hear tiny Samantha’s wail from her apartment’s new nursery.

      “Why would Merrick lie?” Darcie wondered, bringing Claire back to reality.

      “You can’t be that naive.”

      “Oh, yes I can. I’m from Ohio.”

      Her grandmother was watching television in another room, Claire knew, with her demonic cat, and Claire gave thanks for privacy. That, and Eden Baxter’s famous macadamia chocolate chip cookies. Claire snatched another one from the Wedgwood plate on the coffee table. Maybe Darcie should eat more of them, add twenty pounds to her frame, turn her legs into protective pin cushions, and forget men, especially Merrick Lowell. How could she stand him?

      “We don’t do sophisticated in Cincinnati,” Darcie pointed out. “It’s a simpler place. People trust each other there. They leave their cars unlocked—at least in their driveways. They gesture to one another at Stop signs.”

      “With middle fingers?”

      Darcie sighed. “No, with polite waves of the hand to go ahead.”

      “You can’t be serious.” Claire was a New Yorker. Middle fingers were like another borough dialect. Staten Island or the Bronx.

      “They’re so courteous, they stop in the merge lane on the interstates.”

      “I can see the pileups now.”

      While Claire fought against a yawn—lack of rest, not boredom—Darcie stalked to the windows and stared out at a balcony like Claire’s own. Off to the left the majestic George Washington Bridge stretched across the river, but, used to the same view, Claire munched her cookie and studied Darcie’s rich, dark hair. Straight and silky, it gleamed in the light, putting her own carefully frosted curls to shame. And what she wouldn’t give for Darcie’s slim figure just now, or her hazel eyes ringed with darker pigment, not the black circles from no sleep beneath Claire’s generic blue eyes. She wondered if Darcie knew her own value.

      “After yesterday with Greta and what you’re saying about Merrick, maybe I should go home,” Darcie said. “That would make Mom and Dad happy. If I lose this chance at Wunderthings, if Merrick is lying to me—”

      “You’re in love with that ass?”

      Darcie backpedaled. “Well, no. But Merrick’s pretty good in bed.”

      Claire wouldn’t ask about last night. She’d only end up angry with Merrick, and sad for Darcie. Running on three hours’ sleep herself, with her postnatal hormones all over the place, she’d just start crying. For a single instant she envied Darcie. Her figure. Her single life. Her chances.

      “I wouldn’t compromise. I’d look for damn good. Make that stupendous. Lights and laser shows. Fireworks. Excitement, Darcie,” Claire insisted. “Thirty—the big 3-0—is staring us both in the face. You first.” She couldn’t help gloating. “Six months, sweetie. From then on, you don’t settle for third-rate when you choose a man. Or a career, for Pete’s sake—not to take my own husband’s name in vain.”

      “Peter the Great. He’s crazy about you.”

      Was he? Claire didn’t feel certain these days. She thrust her shoulders back to emphasize her newly maternal shape. She needed to remember that she was still a woman. A bigger woman right now but… “Since the baby was born, I’m a goddess. At least after a night’s sleep, which is rare, I am. Did I tell you? He loves my new chest.”

      Darcie turned and rolled her eyes. “He always did.”

      Not that Claire