CHAPTER 24

She pulled his arm and they marched as fast as her 4½ inch heels could take her to a nearby alcove with House stumbling behind her. He was too busy watching her ass to pay attention to actual walking. Just around the corner of the alcove Leah pushed him to a bench and stood over him. "I don't want to be here either but this wasn't my idea."

"Then let's get out of here…" House whispered, taking a long hungry look at her bosom that hung in front of him. He grabbed a handful of the delicate silk from her waist, letting it fall from his hand.

"Good idea…just take out the 'let's' and we'll be fine." House's eyebrow rose at her heaving chest.

"Why are you wearing that dress?" House boldly looked in her eyes and raised his hand to the nearest breast. Leah moved away and he frowned at her movement. "You bought the dress for me, didn't you? You wanted to dress sexy for me."

"You've got some nerve to think that."

"If I wasn't around would you have bought it?" He smirked when she didn't say anything. She turned from him and started toward the door but stopped when he grabbed her wrist. Her heaving increased as House stood up, lifted his other hand and traced the skin along the spaghetti straps crossing her back, his eyes watching the goose pimples that sprang up once again. Leah's eyes closed as her skin was set ablaze; his fingers ached from her warm skin, smooth to his touch but painful to his burgeoning manhood.

"I…haaave…" she moaned lightly then almost squealed when he dipped his fingertips in the bottom of the back of the dress. By then he was so close behind her she felt his quick, hot, rough breath on the back of her neck and his hardness against her rear end. Leah couldn't breathe; couldn't move; couldn't think. House's eyes lifted to her hair as he dropped her wrist and all ten of his fingers quickly removed the combs, the long, loose curls spreading across her shoulders and brushing his face. Her moan grew ragged as his fingers ran through her hair; his nose, fingers and erection twitched with her musky arousal and the silky, thick hair that tickled his nose.

Poor Leah: all she wanted to do was make him stop so she could leave.

At least that's what she thought she wanted.

Then why did it take all she had to lean away from him? "We have to go." To her confounding yet disappointed surprise, his hands left her hair and she escaping, walking back to the party without so much of a backwards glance. House gripped her hair combs in his hands and leaned against the nearby wall to fight for control. Pulling out his omnipresent prescription bottle he popped two Vicodin and rubbed his leg.

There had only been two people in his life that could get him this upset. The first was the man he thought was his father, the man that had made his childhood a living hell. But he'd been able to keep himself from the Marine by moving away and only calling his mother once every year, if that. In some way he was able to get away from that demon man. He could handle it.

This woman was the other.

But unlike his father House could never escape Leah. Leah was the standard to which he held every other woman. It wasn't until he met Stacy that he found someone as close to Leah as he had ever found. And he didn't wait, jumping into that relationship with as much as he was willing to give of himself to someone who wasn't actually Leah. It had been as good as he expected for such a half-hearted effort…until she permanently maimed him. That was when he closed up forever.

Until Leah came back.

It hurt to be with her. His leg hurt. His head hurt. His penis hurt. But his heart hurt the most. Every time she pulled from him it ached just a bit more. It only made him that much more upset. House was as far from romantic as possible, and those so-called 'feelings' he was having just pissed him off even more. He'd been convinced for so long that this sort of crap wasn't possible that it scared the living shit out of him when he found out it really was.

Without a thought to the contrary House pulled himself together because he knew he had to get in there. The torture itself was too sweet.

It was a gorgeous, lavender-eyed, full-breasted, long-legged, smart-as-hell torture.

Life didn't get any better than that.

*****