He nodded. “By about three feet. I, however, didn’t regard that as a serious obstacle at the time because I had a wild crush on her.”
She caught on then and her smile faded. “How old were you?”
“Seven.”
She looked at him as if she knew the slight had hurt him, which, now that he thought about it, it had. “I would never have turned you down, Zack.”
The little catch in her voice and the soft look in her eyes were almost Zack’s undoing. Mesmerized by the feelings unfolding inside him, he pulled his hands out of his pockets and silently held his left palm out to her, his gaze locked to hers. She laid her hand in his, and he slid his arm around her narrow waist, drawing her close against him, while Streisand’s incredible voice slid effortlessly into the first bars of “People.”
A jolt shook him when he felt her legs and thighs coming into intimate contact with his own as she matched his steps with effortless grace, and when she laid her cheek lightly against his chest, his heart began to beat much too fast. He hadn’t even kissed her yet, and desire was already pounding through every nerve ending in his body. To distract himself, he tried to think of an appropriate topic of conversation that would further his ultimate goal without immediately stimulating him more than he already was. Recalling that it had felt good to joke about the tire he’d slashed, he decided that it would benefit both of them if they could laugh about other events that hadn’t been one bit funny at the time. Linking his fingers through hers, he brought her hand against his chest and said lightly against her hair, “By the way, Miss Mathison, about your unscheduled flight on that snowmobile today—”
She caught his wry tone immediately, tipped her head back, and affected an expression of such exaggerated, wide-eyed innocence that Zack had to fight not to laugh. “Yes?” she said.
“Where the hell did you go when you shot over the edge of the mountain like a rocket and vanished?”
Her shoulders shook with laughter. “I landed in the embrace of a large pine tree.”
“That was very clever planning,” he teased. “You stayed nice and dry and tricked me into acting like a demented salmon in that freezing stream.”
“That part wasn’t funny. What you did today was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do.”
It wasn’t the words she said that melted him, it was the way she was looking at him—the admiration in her eyes, the awed wonder in her voice. After the humiliation of his trial and the dehumanizing effects of prison, it was heady merely to be looked at like a man, not an animal. But to have her look at him as if he were brave and fine and decent was a gift more precious to him than anything he’d ever been given. He wanted to crush her in his arms, to lose himself in her sweetness, to wrap her around him like a blanket and bury himself in her, he wanted to be the best lover she’d ever had and to make this night as memorable for her as it was going to be for him.
Julie watched his gaze drop to her lips, and in a state of anticipation that had mounted to dizzying heights in the last hour, she waited for him to kiss her. When it became obvious he wasn’t going to do it, she covered her disappointment with her best, brightest smile and tried to be amusing. “If you ever come to Keaton and meet Tim Martin, please don’t tell him I danced with you tonight”
“Why not?”
“Because he picked a fight with the last person I danced with.”
Despite the absurdity of it, Zack felt the first sharp twinge of jealousy in his adult life. “Is Martin a boyfriend?”
She chuckled at his dark scowl. “No, he’s one of my students. He’s the jealous type—”
“Witch!” he chided her, pulling her tightly against his length while John Denver began to sing “Annie’s Song” on the stereo. “I know exactly how the poor kid must have felt.”
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t really expect me to believe that you were jealous just now, do you?”
Zack’s eyes fixed greedily on her lips. “Five minutes ago,” he murmured, “I would have said I was incapable of such a lowering emotion.”
“Oh. Right,” she said with amused derision, and then she added with laughing severity, “You are overacting, Mr. Movie Star.”
Zack went cold all over. If he had to make a choice between having Julie Mathison imagine him as an escaped convict when he took her to bed tonight or as a movie star, he’d have chosen the former without hesitation. At least the former was real, not illusionary, sickening, and phoney. He’d spent more than a decade of his life living with an image that made him into a sexual trophy. Like football players and hockey stars, he’d had his privacy and his life invaded by female groupies who wanted to sleep with Zachary Benedict Not the man. The image. In fact, this evening had been the first time he’d ever been absolutely certain a woman wanted him simply for himself, and it made him angry to think he’d been wrong.
“Why,” she said cautiously, “are you looking at me like that?”
“Suppose you tell me why,” he countered, “you brought up the expression ‘movie star’ at this particular moment.”
“You aren’t going to like the answer.”
“Try me,” he clipped.
Her eyes narrowed at his tone. “All right. I said it because I have an aversion to insincerity.”
Zack’s brows snapped together. “Do you think you could possibly be a little more specific?”
“Certainly,” Julie replied, repaying his sarcasm with uncharacteristic bluntness: “I said it because you pretended that you were jealous, and then you made it worse by pretending you hadn’t ever, in your entire life, felt that way before. I thought it was not only corny but insincere, particularly because I know, and you know, that I have to be the least attractive woman you’ve bothered to flirt with in your entire adult life! Furthermore, since I’m not treating you like an escaped murderer any more, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t start treating me like . . . like some witless fan of yours who you can charm into fainting at your feet with a few words of empty flattery.”
Belatedly registering the thunderous expression on his face, Julie jerked her gaze from his and stared at his shoulder, embarrassed and ashamed for letting her hurt feelings drive her to such an outburst. She braced herself for a verbal blasting, but after a moment of ominous silence she said in a small, contrite voice, “I suppose I probably didn’t need to be that specific. I’m sorry. Now it’s your turn.”
‘To do what?” he retorted.
“I imagine to tell me that I was rude and obnoxious just now.”
“Fine. You were.”
He’d stopped dancing, and Julie drew a long fortifying breath before she raised her gaze to his impassive face. “You’re angry, aren’t you?”
“I’m not certain.”
“What do you mean, you aren’t certain?”
“I mean that, where you’re concerned, I haven’t been certain of anything since about noon today, and the uncertainty is getting worse by the moment”
He sounded so strange, so . . . off balance . . . that Julie felt a wayward smile touch her lips. She doubted very much if any other woman, no matter how beautiful, could have put him in exactly this state. She didn’t know how it had happened, but she felt rather proud. “I think,” she said, “I like that.”
He wasn’t amused. “Unfortunately, I don’t.”
“Oh.”
“In fact, I think we’d better reach some sort of clear understanding about what is going on between us and what we want to go on between us.” In the back of his mind, Zack knew he was being completely irrational, but five years of imprisonment along with the harrowing emotional and physical events of the day and the roller-coaster ride she’d had him on for the last twenty-four hours were all combining to play havoc with his temper, his emotions, and his judgment. “Well, do you agree?”
“I—guess so.”
“Fine, do you want to go first, or shall I?”
She swallowed, torn between dread and amusement. “You go first.”
?
??Half the time I have the craziest feeling that you’re not real . . . that you’re too naive to be twenty-six years old . . . that you’re a thirteen-year-old girl pretending to be a woman.”
She smiled with relief that he hadn’t said anything worse. “And the other half of the time?”
“You make me feel like I’m thirteen.” He could tell she liked that from the quick amused sparkle in her eyes, and suddenly Zack felt perversely compelled to shatter whatever remaining illusions she might conceivably have about him personally as well as his intentions for the evening. “Despite how you perceive what happened at the stream today, I am not a knight in shining armor. I am not a movie star, and I am a long way from being a naive, idealistic teenager! Whatever innocence and idealism I was born with, I lost long before I lost my virginity. I’m not a child and neither are you. We’re adults. We both know what’s happening between us right now, and we know exactly what all of this is leading up to.” The laughter left her eyes replaced by something that was not quite fear and not quite anger either. “Do you want me to spell it out, so there’s no mistaking my motives?” he persisted, watching a heated blush stain her smooth cheeks. Stung because the knowledge that he wanted to go to bed with her had doused her smile, he deliberately pushed his point. “My motives aren’t noble; they’re adult and they’re natural. We aren’t thirteen years old, this isn’t a school dance, and my mind isn’t on whether or not I’ll be able to kiss you good night. It’s already a foregone conclusion that I’m going to kiss you good night. The fact is that I want you, and I think you want me almost as much. Before this night is over, I intend to make sure you do, and when I’ve done that, I intend to take you to bed and undress you and make love to you as thoroughly and leisurely as I can. For now, I want to dance with you, so that I can feel your body against mine. While we’re dancing, I’ll be thinking of all the things I’m going to do to you—and with you—when we’re in bed together. Now, have I made everything clear? If none of that suits you, then you tell me what you want to do, and we’ll do that. Well?” he snapped impatiently when she remained silent with her head bent. “What do you want to do?”
Julie bit her trembling lip and raised eyes glowing with laughter and desire to his. “How would you like to help me rearrange the hall closet?”
“Do you have a second choice?” he demanded, so irritated that he didn’t realize she was joking.
“Actually,” she said, furrowing her brow and lowering her gaze to the vee at the throat of his open shirt collar. “That was my second choice.”
“Well then, what the hell is your first choice? And don’t pretend I’m making you so nervous you want to clean out closets, because I couldn’t make you nervous at gunpoint!”
Julie added irascibility and obtuseness to the things she loved about him and drew a shaky breath, ready to call an end to the game, but she couldn’t quite meet his gaze as she said softly, “You’re right, you couldn’t possibly make me nervous at gunpoint after today, because I know you wouldn’t hurt me for the world. In fact, the only way you could make me nervous is by doing exactly what you’ve been doing since I woke up tonight and saw you standing by the fireplace.”
“Which is?” he clipped.
“Which is making me wonder if you’re ever going to kiss me the way you did last night . . . Which is acting like you very much want to do it one minute, and then, like you don’t the next min—”
Zack caught her face between his hands, turned it up, and abruptly captured the rest of her words in his mouth, shoving his fingers through the sides of her hair as he kissed her. And when she proved she meant it, when she slid her hands up his chest and around his neck, holding him close and kissing him back, he felt a burgeoning pleasure and astonished joy that was almost past bearing.
Trying to atone for his earlier roughness, he dragged his lips from hers and brushed a kiss along her jaw and cheek and temple, then he sought her mouth again, rubbing his lips over their soft contours. He traced the trembling line between her lips with his tongue, urging them to part, insisting, and when they did, he drove fully into her mouth—a starving man helplessly trying to satisfy a hunger by teaching her to intensify it. And the woman in his arms was a willing and gifted student. Melting against him, she crushed her mouth to his, welcoming his tongue and giving him hers with only the merest hint from him that he wanted it.
Long minutes later, Zack finally forced himself to lift his head, and he gazed down into her eyes, unconsciously memorizing the way she looked, all flushed and fresh and alluring. Trying to smile, he slid his hand around her nape and slowly rubbed his thumb over her soft bottom lip, but the deep indigo pools of her eyes were pulling him inexorably into their depths again. His thumb stopped moving, he pressed it down to force her lips apart and hungrily captured her mouth. Trembling in his arms, she leaned up on her toes and the slight increase in pressure against his rigid erection made his heart thunder and his fingers clench convulsively against her back. He crushed her pliant body into his, his hands rushing over the sides of her breasts and back, then angling across her buttocks, holding her tightly against his straining body. He was losing control, and he knew it.
Zack told himself to slow down, ordered himself to stop before he forced her to the floor and followed her down, before he behaved like the sex-starved convict he was instead of the leisurely lover he’d promised to be in his angry tirade. It was the distant, nagging memory of his promise that finally made him try to prolong the prelude, to heed the warning of his pounding arousal that the culmination was going to happen much too quickly for her, once it began.
He forced his hands away from her breasts and settled them on the curve of her waist instead; but it was harder by far to stop the driving movements of his tongue when she was clinging to him and answering and digging her nails into his back. When he finally pulled his mouth an inch from hers, Zack wasn’t certain if it was she or he who moaned with the loss before she leaned her forehead weakly against his chest. Eyes closed, his heart pumping fast, he dragged air into his lungs and slid his arms around her back to steady her against him. But it was no use—he had to have her, all of her, now. Drawing a ragged breath, he put his hand under her chin and tipped her face up. Her eyes were closed, long lashes lying on her creamy cheeks, as she instinctively lifted her lips to his.
Zack’s control snapped. His mouth seized hers with fierce desperation, forcing her lips to part as his hands pulled the silk tie of her robe open, then shoved it apart, pushing the material down her arms and sending it to the floor in front of the fireplace so that he could feast on the sight and touch of her skin.
Wrapped in his arms, Julie felt him lowering her to the floor, but she didn’t surface from her state of mindless pleasure until he took his mouth and hands from her. She opened her eyes and saw him hurriedly unbutton his shirt and yank it out of his pants, tossing it aside, but not until he looked up at her did she feel the first stirrings of panic. In the firelight, his eyes had a fierce glitter as they moved restlessly over her body; passion had turned his face hard and intense, and when she lifted her arm self-consciously to cover her breasts, his voice was harsh: “Don’t!”
She shivered convulsively at that stranger’s voice, that stranger’s face, and when he pulled her hand away and covered her with his upper body, she realized instinctively that the preliminaries were abruptly over and he was going to be driving into her in a matter of moments unless she slowed him down. “Zack,” she whispered, trying to make him listen without just blurting out the situation. “Wait!”
The word didn’t register with Zack, but the panic in it struck a mildly discordant note, and so did the fact that she was shoving on his shoulders and squirming against his thigh in a way that was wildly provocative.
“Zack!”
Zack knew he was going too fast, cheating on the foreplay, and he thought she was objecting to that.
“There’s something I need to tell you!”
With an effort that nearly sapped his
strength, he made himself move onto his side, but when he bent his head to her breast to oblige her, she caught his face in her hands to stop him and forced it up.
“Please!” Julie said, looking into his smoldering eyes. She spread her fingers over his rigid jaw, softening it, and when he turned his face into her palm and kissed it, her heart swelled with relief and tenderness. “We have to talk first.”
“You talk,” he said gruffly, pulling her tighter to him, kissing the side of her mouth and her neck, sliding his hand over her breast, “I’ll listen,” he lied, his fingers stroking down, past her flat belly, sliding into the triangle of curls. She jerked beneath him, grabbing his hand, and the topic she chose to discuss was, in his opinion, the most inanely inopportune one ever brought up by any woman in history at a time like this: “How old were you the first time you made love?”
He closed his eyes and swallowed an understandably impatient retort. “Twelve.”
“Don’t you want to know how old I was?”
“No,” he said tightly, moving up to kiss her breast since for some reason, known only to her, she didn’t want to be touched more intimately. His entire body was straining with need and he was trying his damndest to touch her in the places that he remembered very clearly gave women the quickest and greatest pleasure.
“I was twenty-six,” she provided in a panicky voice when his mouth closed tightly on her nipple.
His blood was roaring in his ears; he heard the words but not the import. She tasted so good; she felt even better. Her breasts weren’t large or heavy, but they were pretty and exquisitely feminine, just like she was, and if she’d only be as receptive to him as she’d been when they were standing up, he’d give her a climax now, before he came inside her, and then afterward he’d make love to her properly. He had five years of pent-up desire to expend; he’d be able to make love to her all damned night without stopping if she’d just let him do this and stop clamping her legs together, and stop talking about how old she was the . . . first time . . . she had . . . sex . . .