And yet…
There simply were no guarantees. And so she was afraid.
But she wanted him. With a sweet, slow-burning hunger that was far greater than her fear. She didn’t want him to speak, she didn’t want him to ask permission. She just wanted to pretend that it was all darkness, no questions, no answers, no…
He touched her. Her face first, fingers moving over her cheeks, knuckles brushing her forehead, the tip of his thumb running over her lower lip. There was something about this… this way he had of touching her face. Of course, he had other ways of touching her more intimately, sometimes, just the brush of his fingers, the tip of his tongue… the lightest caress. There were ways, yes, that he could touch her, ways that could bring her to a climax in a matter of minutes. Ways that she had always loved. And yet this…
The feel of his fingertips, the tenderness in them as he brushed her face… It had been a long dry spell since she had known him. A barren desert in time, because she had known this touch, this feeling, and so, always, from the depths of her being, she had craved no less. Better to sleep alone. But now…
He smiled at her. “You know, you have always been incredibly sexy.”
“I, um, I try,” she said flippantly. Sexy with wet hair— in terry. “I’m not exactly a dancer… stripper…”
“Thank God.”
“But they were beautiful. You even said that you could want them under the right circumstances—”
“If you weren’t in my life. There’s no one I want, when I can see you.”
“You know, you’ve always had a great line.”
“Not a line, the truth. And I’m pretty good at getting rid of clothing on a woman. And thankfully, you’re not burdened with too many pieces.”
She shouldn’t have smiled.
She did.
“And there’s no one I know who looks better without clothing. Actually, there’s no one I’ve ever seen who looks better. No one. Not a stripper in the world. Although, I must admit, they did make me think. About you. Naked.”
He kissed her. He never did anything hesitantly, or halfheartedly. His mouth formed over hers, never questioning, simply deciding. Her lips parted swiftly, instinctively, to the passionate demand of his. She burned to the simple pleasure of his tongue, wet, hot, probing deeply into her mouth. She wanted to be analytical: Sex, yes, simply sex, a basic instinct, something we all need or at least crave, as simple as breathing, I don’t have to fall so fast, become so involved, make this an emotional thing…
Instinct, yes. She’d waited a long time. He could do all the right things, had a way of knowing, how and where to touch, when to tease, when to take…
He kissed her deeply. No way to be analytical. He kissed in a way that demanded emotion, and commitment to the deed and nothing more. Kissed in a way that touched her all the way through, elicited sweet hot fire, a roiling in her blood, an intimate rise of desire where he did touch, a craving where he didn’t.
So she kissed him back.
Tasted his lips, delved into his mouth, slipped her arms around him and held him as he held her, felt the hard-muscled pressure of his body against her own. And the world seemed to explode in a riot of sweet, wet beauty as it seemed that she came alive.
He touched her cheek, calloused fingers both gentle and sensual. His soft stroke moved along her throat. Her robe parted.
She hadn’t tied it very well.
His hand, large and encompassing, cupped her breast. His fingers curled around her, thumb tip playing erotically against her nipple. She felt her knees give, liquid fill her, limbs and flesh, a searing in her blood. His mouth lifted from hers; he stepped back. Her robe remained parted and he looked at her, then stepped forward, slid it from her shoulders until it fell to the floor. Again he stepped back, and she was tempted to cover herself, embarrassed, afraid, yet suddenly her limbs seemed frozen.
“You look so… wonderful,” he murmured.
“I feel so cold!” she whispered.
His lips curled into a half smile. “In such a hot city. We’ll have to do something about that.”
Teasing words, but she shivered, suddenly looking around.
“I’ve closed everything,” Rowan said quickly.
“I still…”
I can see you!
Perhaps Rowan remembered the phone call at the same time. He stepped forward, taking her into his arms. She felt the rich, provocative heat as his hands stroked her back, her buttocks, drawing her nearer. She could feel his erection through his clothing. “Trust me, I learned how to hide from the world. Look around you. I’ve closed everything. Tightly. No one can see anything. You’re safe.”
“Safe?” she queried.
“Safe… from everything and everyone!” he assured her. His fingers feathered through her hair. Like a cat, she wanted nothing more than just to rub against him.
“From everyone and everything—except you,” she told him, and prayed that she managed to say it somewhat lightly, and not with the vulnerability she was feeling. There was no stepping back. There was so much that should be said. She wanted some kind of an assurance, and yet she knew that couldn’t be. Life didn’t work that way.
So what was it?
She wanted the moment?
Yes, and more…
He pulled away slightly, studying her eyes. His fingers brushed her chin, touched her cheeks. His gaze was intense. His smile came very slowly. “Maybe you’re right. What I want to offer may not be safety. But is that really what you want?”
“Ah, the very question I’ve been asking myself!”
His eyes remained steadily on her, flecked with their gold, so challenging. He wasn’t going to try to explain anymore. He had already done so.
Well, she had accepted the challenge before. Loved and lost.
“I should want safety,” she told him gravely. She should. But all she wanted was him naked too. What had happened to her? No decorum, no dignity at all. It had been that awful club!
“I think it’s too late for safety,” he told her. “And I also think you’re a liar.”
“Oh?”
He was grinning. “What you want is sex.”
“And you know what I want so clearly?”
“Well, you were fairly clear last night,” he said blandly.
“Oh, was I?”
“And you did just come racing down here in a bathrobe.”
“Last night—”
“I was a complete gentleman. But now… I think you’re just dying for sex, and you’re going to have it.”
“And the papers have always claimed that you’re not egotistical! Well, you might be wrong. Perhaps I just wanted to remind you of all that you gave up. Me. I could turn away now. Maybe you mean nothing to me, and I really do go around casually nude on a day-to-day basis. You could just go on home again.”
“I could.” He waited. “Perhaps I even should. So turn away. I’ll have no choice.” He waited. She felt as if the night had wrapped around her, and the air held her where she stood. It was his eyes, she thought, that kept her there. After a moment he said softly, “You’re not turning around.”
“I’m taking my time. Deciding,” she told him.
“Well, I have suggested that it’s your call.”
“I wish it were that simple. Easy for you to say when I’m already standing here… as I’m standing here.”
“Trust me, walking away would be much, much harder for me!” His tone changed; it was suddenly harsh. “My God, I hurt you, but you can’t begin to understand what it was like for me before—”
“No, you can’t understand what it felt like for me!” she charged him.
“Then. The past. But it’s now, and… you’re so… unbelievably wonderful,” he murmured, and his voice was a breeze of rich, husky seduction against her ear. “More beautiful than ever, then even I remembered, and in memory, you know, you were beyond all human beauty.”
“Untrue,” she charged him.
“I wouldn’t
lie.”
“Then how could you have ever turned away from me so completely?” she asked, a strange little sob catching in her throat.
He didn’t answer her. He kissed her throat, and slid along her length, his hands molding the form of her body, head burrowing against her abdomen as he came to his knees. Her fingers threaded into his hair; she was going to fall. So much for conversation, recriminations, the past. He was here, now, mouth hot and open against the vulnerable flesh of her belly, fingers curving her hips and buttocks. He nuzzled against her, touched her, teased, coaxed. Her fingers tightened in his hair. She murmured something, protested, gasped, encouraged. His knuckles brushed her inner thighs, his lips touched there, light, feathering, harder, fingers stroking higher and higher. A circle within seemed to wind tighter and tighter, hungry, tantalizing, whirling around a center that ached and yearned and longed, and oh, God, just itched to be stroked, touched, taken…
Touched, taken. The subtle, then not so subtle, probe of his fingers. A stroke that teased, elicited. Then the touch of his tongue, a caress that found the ardent center of all of her hunger and desire and seduced unbearably. She cried out something unintelligible, still wanting so badly to tell him that she didn’t want him, that he should just go straight to hell, while at the same time she was certain that she would die if he went away…
“Stop, please!” She begged then, fingers taut in his ink dark hair, body trembling wildly, flesh on fire yet cold in the air, burning here, shivering here.
“Please…”
It was building in her, something so delicious she couldn’t stand it, a mercury rising. Her cheeks were flushed, her breath came in pants, she needed to pull away; she could do nothing but press closer, feel, wait, build, shake and tremble and beg him not to touch her anymore even as she arched against that touch until…
She screamed, cried out, felt the warmth of intense pleasure fill her, even with the realization that she hated the light, wanted the darkness, a place to curl away, to remember this, both ecstasy and embarrassment. For a moment she couldn’t begin to understand Marnie, who could do this so easily, accept any intimacy, from so many different people, when she felt so vulnerable. She closed her eyes and lowered her head as he rose, but he caught her chin, lifted it, and kissed her lips again, and when she opened her eyes, he was smiling. His eyes, so close, were green and gold, and more intimate even than what had happened between them.
“Still so shy, the primmest wanton I’ve ever known. My God, you’ve known me, know me well, and you’re just dying to turn away.”
“Maybe it’s all an act,” she murmured, forcing herself to meet his eyes. “I know you—maybe you don’t know me so well…”
He pressed his finger against her lips. “Shut up,” he said softly.
She shook her head, challenging him. “So you think I’ve just been waiting for you all my life? Pining for you, that you’d come find me?”
“Have you?” he asked her, smiling.
“Don’t be an ass!”
He wasn’t offended; his smile never faded. “Why? I’ve always looked for you.”
“I can imagine!” she whispered. “You looked hard, scrutinizing every woman.”
“I didn’t say I became celibate.”
“You talk far too much.”
His grin deepened. He slipped an arm beneath her and picked her up. Easy. He was large, she was small. “I can see the stairs. Or—are you still deciding?”
“I’m going to hit you any second.”
She wished that it wasn’t quite so wonderful. Being with him again. There was something so familiar. The way he held her… his strength, his ease, and always, his lack of pretense. But it had been wonderful before. Wonderful…
The hall light cast a gentle glow into her room. He laid her down on the bed, and she could see his face in the shadows, and his bronzed shoulders and chest as he stripped off his shirt. Shoes cast aside, cutoffs and briefs, and he crawled over. Wonderful. The feel of the length of his naked flesh against her own. Fire! A warmth she hadn’t known in forever. She wanted to reach for him, touch him, forget all the talk she had tried to use to deny herself. She itched, she yearned. She tried to draw him to her, but he pushed her back, and drew away, and his voice seemed strangely harsh as he told her, “Never completely, you know.”
“What?” She could feel him so vibrantly, the sound of his breathing, the pulse of his heartbeats. The line of his jaw was so close, she knew the texture of his skin, the scent of him, each ripple of muscle, the titillatingly erotic feel of his erection against her flesh. The pulse of his heartbeat surged there as well, and she wanted only the magic of the darkness and the night.
“I could never push you away completely.”
“It doesn’t matter. Not now… this isn’t—isn’t a commitment,” she whispered a little desperately. “Just a little sex between neighbors.”
“It does matter,” he told her insistently. “It matters. You were always with me. When I was with Dina, with anyone, you were there, in my memory, always there, always. She knew it. She never believed that I loved her when I tried to help her. God help me, it might have been a mistake. But you should know, if I could go back, I would still have to try.”
“Fine!” she told him. “And stop, please, stop, just…” She curled her arms around his neck, drawing him to her again. She found his mouth, kissed him, teased his lips with her tongue, arched her length against him. She felt his muscles tense. She writhed to be closer, touched his face as she kissed him feverishly, passionately, drew her fingers over his shoulders, his back, down to his buttocks. She stroked, teased with her fingernails, kneaded, feathered, pressed. She brought her hand between them, drew a line down his middle, stroked over the tightly knotted muscles of his belly until she touched his sex, encompassed, teased, and stroked. She heard sounds thundering in his chest, emitting in a groan, and then she was the aggressor no more, for her hand was pressed aside, his weight and length wedged between her thighs. She felt his thumb, stroking, rotating, wetting, preparing, finding the exact place where the madness of desire was throbbing within her. She choked something against his shoulder, and the fullness of his sex was suddenly within her. Slow, oh, so agonizingly slow as he first sank inside, deeper, more, more… Her fingers tore into his back, her body arched, slammed. He withdrew… then moved again, deeper, deeper… Lord… deeper. She gripped his shoulders, tossed her head…
She felt his eyes. Knew he was watching her. She couldn’t meet his gaze. She whispered something, demanded, frantic. And then… she received. He moved with force and power, arms wrapped around her hard, hands sliding down her back, encompassing her buttocks, pressing her closer and closer. She felt him through the length of her, in her blood, her limbs, her body, in the center of her being, between her legs, the juncture of her thighs where the spiraling tightened to a coil of desperate ecstasy. She clung to him, slick, shaking, writhing, and climax seized her again with a grip as powerful as the man above her, and she cried out, tossed into the soul of the darkness, shaking anew as little seizures of after pleasure rippled through her center, and on throughout the length and breadth of her.
Seconds later, she felt his constrictions as he climaxed within her. Explosive warmth encompassed her. Seconds ticked by in which the shadow magic of satiation swept them both. Then night fell again. Night, in the darkness, with the past between. Too fast. She had let it come all too fast. She had wanted him. Just as before. She had loved everything about him, his size, his build, the way his shoulders were tanned, the patterns of his chest hair, his scent, his eyes, his voice, the way he touched her…
Now, fingers stroking her cheeks. She had wanted him, did want him. But she had loved him, still loved him, and it was a selfish wanting, and for some reason she couldn’t quite seem to let herself have him easily. The past remained. And so she said, “Was it still difficult to push me away completely… when you were with Marnie?”
She bit her lower lip as soon as the words left
her mouth. It had been the wrong thing to say.
He rose. Naked, graceful, restless. He walked to her window, slightly shifting the drape. He could see the bay from that window, she knew.
And Marnie’s house as well.
He didn’t answer. She stared at his back. Straight, defined. Fine, muscled buttocks, good long sturdy legs. Handsome even from the back. She found herself pulling up the comforter and sheets, slipping beneath them. She sat up, hugging her knees and all the bedding to her chest. “You did sleep with Marnie, didn’t you?” she persisted softly.
He turned around and stared at her. In the darkness and shadows, she couldn’t read his eyes. Neither, she thought, could he read hers.
She wanted him back. She wanted to pretend she had never spoken. She wanted his answer to be no.
“Yes,” he said simply.
“I see.”
“No, you don’t. You don’t see at all.”
“What’s really to see?” she asked, and tried to sound as if she spoke offhandedly.
“I’ve looked for you. I’ve looked for you in everything I’ve done. I wanted all the traits and virtues—and yes, even the faults—I’d found in you. But you were right. I had pushed you out of my life. I didn’t expect you to be somewhere in the world waiting for me. I didn’t stop living.”
“Marnie is a beautiful woman,” she said, shrugging.
“No. Marnie was—”
“Is! Marnie is!” she interrupted passionately.
He hesitated, and she knew that he hadn’t realized he had spoken in the past tense. “Marnie is a wounded girl, with scars that run so deep they’ll never heal.”
Sam plucked at the sheets. “I know that Marnie was hurt. I suspected that—”
“She was abused, sexually, from the time she was about ten. Like any little kid, she was looking for affection. What she got was betrayal of the worst kind, the most heinous kind. You’ve met her father. Can you imagine her life?”