Mirror Image

her temple. “She’s going to be okay.”
    “Thank God.”
    “Then what are you crying for?”
    “I’m exhausted,” she confessed with a soft laugh. “I’m going to take a long, hot bath. This day seems like it’s lasted twenty years.”
    He had lived through Fancy’s crisis and Mandy’s nightmare with her. But Tate didn’t know that Avery had experienced an anxiety attack at the Spanish church when she had spotted her nemesis outside the nave, surrounded by clambering media.
    Once they had safely reached the limo, she had snuggled close to Tate, linking her arm through his and hugging his firm biceps to her breast. What he’d mistaken for an outpouring of affection had actually been a reaction to stark fear.
    When Avery came out of the bathroom a half hour later, her skin was dewy and fragrant from soaking in bath oil. With the light behind her, she provided him with a tantalizing silhouette of her body through her nightgown.
    “Still exhausted?” he asked.
    The room was dim. The bed had been turned down. Avery’s subconscious registered this, because she only had eyes for Tate. His hair was attractively mussed. The single light burning in the bathroom gilded his body hair. It fuzzily smattered his chest, whorled around his navel, then tapered to a satiny stripe that disappeared into the unfastened waistband of his trousers.
    “Not that exhausted,” she replied huskily. “Not if you have something other than sleep in mind.”
    “What I have in mind,” he said, moving toward her, “is making love to my wife.”
    When he reached her, he curled one hand around the back of her neck and, without any hesitation, slid the other one inside her nightgown to cover her breast. Holding her eyes with his, he finessed the nipple.
    “I don’t mean just couple with the woman I happened to be married to,” he whispered while his thumb continued giving her nipple glancing blows. “I mean make
love
to my
wife.
”
    He drew her face up close to his, paused, probed her eyes, then took her lips beneath his. There was a difference in his kiss. The difference was subtle, yet tremendous. Avery sensed it immediately. Technically it was the same, as his tongue gently but possessively mated with her mouth. But somehow it was much more personal, more intimate, more giving.
    Minutes later they were in bed. Tate was naked, lying above her, his lips following down her nightgown as he lowered it inch by delicious inch.
    When it was completely off, he laid his head on her belly, his shoulders between her thighs, and fervently kissed the yielding softness. “I never thought I could love you again. But after what you’ve done for Mandy, and for me,” he added thickly, “I’ll be damned if I don’t love you more than ever.”
    He slid his hands beneath her hips and tilted them up. His parted lips whisked the smooth skin of her abdomen. He kissed the delta of dark curls, nuzzled it with his nose, feathered it with his breath.
    Catching his hair with her hands, she arched up, offering her open thighs to his caressing mouth. He drew the silky, slippery, softness between his lips, imbibing her taste and scent, using his flicking, stroking, questioning tongue to bring her to one crashing climax after another.
    Then she inverted her body and returned the favor. Her lips covered the smooth head of his penis. She sucked it tenderly and used the tip of her tongue to cleave the groove and pick up the pearly drops of fluid already collected there.
    Tate prayed to nameless gods when she took him into her mouth completely, and when he filled it with the very essence of himself, he gave hoarse, rasping cries that left them feeling perfectly marvelous and replete.
    Later that night, while they lay dozing, he drew her back against his chest. He kissed her warm, soft nape. He nibbled her shoulder. He said nothing, but waited, as though asking her permission to continue.
    She merely purred like a drowsy cat and responded when he eased her thigh up toward her chest, leaving her open for his smooth entry. Their bodies gently undulated against each other with no discernible motion. It was a facile, fluid fuck.
    Reaching around her, he caressed her breasts, reshaping them with his hand, then fanned his fingertips across the pebbly nipples.
    She pressed her buttocks into the curve of his body, and rubbed her smooth flesh against the dense hair spreading outward from the root of his sex. He groaned his approval and drew her up higher,