by Nora Roberts
She hadn’t a clue how revealing that face was, he thought, as he tugged down the covers, shifting her until he could spread them over her. Oh, it was subtle, like her scent. A man had to get close, very close, before he understood. But he’d gotten close, very close, without either of them realizing it. And he’d seen the way she’d watched his family, with wistfulness, with yearning.
Always staying a step back, always the observer.
And he’d seen the way she’d watched Seth. With love, and with longing, and again from a distance.
So as not to intrude? To protect herself? He thought it was a combination of both. He wasn’t quite sure exactly what went on in her heart, in her mind. But he was determined to find out.
“I think I might be in love with you, Sybill.” He said it quietly as he stretched out beside her. “Damn if that doesn’t complicate things for both of us.”
* * *
SHE WOKE IN the dark, and for a moment, just a flash, she was a child again and afraid of all those things that lurked in the shadows. She had to press her lips together, very hard, until it hurt. Because if she cried out one of the servants would hear and might tell her mother. Her mother would be annoyed. Her mother wouldn’t like it that she’d cried about the dark again.
Then she remembered. She wasn’t a child. There was nothing lurking in the shadows but more shadows. She was a grown woman who knew it was foolish to be afraid of the dark when there was so much else to fear.
Oh, she’d made a fool of herself, she thought, as more memories slipped through. A terrible fool of herself. Letting herself become upset that way. Worse, letting it show until she’d had no control, none whatsoever. Instead of maintaining her composure, she’d rushed out of the house like an idiot.
Inexcusable.
Then she’d cried all over Phillip. Wept like a baby right in the front yard as if she’d . . .
Phillip.
Mortification had her moaning aloud, covering her face with her hands. She sucked in a gasp when an arm came around her.
“Ssh.”
She recognized his touch, his scent even before he drew her against him. Before his mouth brushed her temple, before his body fit comfortingly to hers.
“It’s all right,” he murmured.
“I—I thought you’d gone.”
“I said I’d stay.” He slitted his eyes open, scanned the dull red glow of the bedside alarm. “Three A.M. hotel time. Should have figured it.”
“I didn’t mean to wake you.” As her eyes grew accustomed to the dark, she could make out the sweep of his cheekbone, the ridge of his nose, the shape of his mouth. Her fingers itched to touch.
“When I wake up in the middle of the night in bed with a beautiful woman, it’s hard to mind.”
She smiled, relieved that he wasn’t going to press her about her earlier behavior. It could just be the two of them now. No yesterday to mourn over, no tomorrow to worry about.
“I imagine you’ve had a lot of practice.”
“Some things you want to get just right.”
His voice was so warm, his arm so strong, his body so firm. “When you wake up in the middle of the night in bed with a woman, and she wants to seduce you, do you mind?”
“Hardly ever.”
“Well, if you wouldn’t mind . . .” She shifted, slid her body over his, found his lips with her lips, his tongue with her tongue.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I start to mind.”
Her laugh was low and warm. Gratitude moved through her, for what he’d done for her, what he’d come to be to her. She wanted so badly to show him.
It was dark. She could be anything she wanted to be in the dark.
“Maybe I won’t stop if you do.”
“Threats?” He was every bit as surprised, and aroused, by the teasing purr of her voice as he was by the deliberate, circling trail of her fingertips down his body. “You don’t scare me.”
“I can.” She began to follow the trail with her mouth. “I will.”
“Give it your best shot. Jesus.” His eyes all but crossed. “Bull’s-eye.”
She laughed again and lapped at him like a cat. When his body quivered, and his breathing grew thick and ragged, she scraped her nails slowly up his sides and down again.
What a wonder the male form was, she thought, dreamily exploring it. Hard, smooth, the planes and angles so perfectly fashioned to mate with woman. With her.
Silky here, then rough. Firm, then yielding. She could make him want and ache just as he made her want and ache. She could give, she could take just as he did and all the wonderful and wicked things people did in the dark, she could do.
He’d go mad if she continued. He’d die if she stopped. Her mouth was hot and restless, and everywhere. Those elegant fingers had the blood raging through his veins. As their flesh grew damp, her body slipped and slid over his, a pale silhouette in the dark.
She was any woman. The only woman. He craved her like life.
Dreamlike, she rose up over him, shrugging out of her robe, arching her back, shaking her hair back. What soared through her now was freedom. Power. Lust. Her eyes gleamed, catlike against the dark, bewitching him.
She lowered herself, taking him inside her slowly, dimly aware of what effort it cost him to allow her to set the pace. Her breath caught, released on a moaning sigh of pleasure. Caught again, released again when his hands captured her breasts, squeezed, possessed.
She rocked, small movements, torturously slow, arousing herself with the power. And kept her eyes on his. He shuddered beneath her, his muscles bunched, his body tight between her thighs. Strong, she thought, he was so strong. Strong enough to let her take him as she chose.
She skimmed her hands over his chest, then lowered. Her hair curtained their faces as her mouth closed hard over his. A tangle of tongues and teeth and breath.
The orgasm rolled through her like a wave, growing, building, then sweeping her up and over. She reared back with it, body bowing, and rode it out.
Then she rode him.
He gripped her hips, his fingers digging in as she surged over him. All reckless speed and clashing light now, all heat and greed. His mind emptied, his lungs screamed, and his body climbed desperately toward release.
When he found it, it was brutal and brilliant.
She seemed to melt over him, her body as soft and hot and fluid as a pool of liquid wax. Her heart thudded hard against the frantic beat of his own. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t find the air to push the words free. But the ones that shimmered on his tongue were three that he’d been careful never to say to a woman.
Triumph still glowed inside her. She stretched, lazy and satisfied as a cat, then curled herself against him. “That,” she said sleepily, “was exactly right.”
“What?”
She chuckled softly and ended on a yawn. “I may not have scared you, but I fried your brain.”
“No question.” A sex-scrambled brain. Men who started thinking about love, much less bringing the word up when they were hot and naked and wrapped around a woman, just got themselves in trouble.
“First time I ever liked waking up at three A.M.” Already half asleep, she pillowed her head on his shoulder. She shifted. “Cold,” she muttered.
He reached down and tugged up the tangled sheets and blankets. She nipped an edge with her fingers, pulled them up to her chin.
For the second time in one night, Phillip lay awake, staring at the ceiling while she slept deep and still beside him.
EIGHTEEN
IT WAS BARELY light when Phillip crawled out of bed. He didn’t bother to moan. What good would it do? Just because he’d barely slept, his mind was fogged with fatigue and worry, and he had an entire day of backbreaking manual labor ahead of him was no reason to complain.
The fact that there was no coffee was a damn go
od reason to complain.
Sybill stirred as he started to dress. “You have to go to the boatyard?”
“Yeah.” He rolled his tongue over his teeth as he jerked up his slacks. Christ, he didn’t even have a toothbrush with him.
“Do you want me to order up some breakfast? Coffee?”
Coffee. The word alone was like a siren’s song in his blood.
But he grabbed his shirt. If she ordered coffee, he would have to talk to her. He didn’t think it was a smart move to have a conversation when he was in such a foul mood. And why was he in a foul mood? he asked himself. Because he hadn’t slept and she’d managed to sneak through his legendary defenses while he wasn’t looking and make him fall in love with her.
“I’ll get some at home.” His voice was clipped and edgy. “I have to go back and change anyway.” Which was why he was up so damn early.
The sheets rustled as she sat up. He watched her out of the corner of his eye and reached for his socks. She looked tousled and tumbled and temptingly soft.
Yeah, she was sneaky all right. Hitting him over the head like that with her vulnerability, sobbing in his arms that way and looking so damned hurt and defenseless. Then waking up in the middle of the night and turning into some sort of a sex-fantasy goddess.
Now she was offering him coffee. She had a hell of a nerve.
“I appreciate you staying last night. It helped.”
“I’m here to serve,” he said shortly.
“I . . .” She gnawed on her bottom lip, alerted and confused by his tone. “It was a difficult day for both of us. I suppose I’d have been wiser to stay away. I was already a little off balance after Gloria’s call, and then—”
His head shot up. “What? Gloria called you?”
“Yes.” And now, Sybill thought, she’d only proven why that was information best kept to herself. He was upset. Everyone was going to be upset.
“She called you? Yesterday?” With his temper simmering, he picked up his shoe, examined it. “And you didn’t think that it was worth mentioning before this?”
“I didn’t see any point in it.” Because her hands couldn’t seem to keep still, she pushed at her hair, tugged at the sheet. “I wasn’t going to mention it at all, actually.”
“Weren’t you? Maybe you forgot, momentarily, that Seth is my family’s responsibility. That we have a right to know if your sister’s going to cause more trouble. A need to know,” he said, rising as his anger rapidly approached flash point. “So that we can protect him.”
“She won’t do anything to—”
“How the hell do you know?” He exploded with it, rounding on her so that she clutched the sheets in white-knuckled fingers. “How can you know? By observing from ten paces back. Goddamn it, Sybill, this isn’t a fucking exercise. This is life. What the hell did she want?”
She wanted to shrink, as she always did from anger. She coated her heart and her voice with ice, as she always did to face it. “She wanted money, of course. She wanted me to demand it from you, to give her more myself. She shouted at me, too, and swore at me, just as you are. It appears that staying ten paces back has put me directly in the middle.”
“I want to know if and when she contacts you again. What did you tell her?”
Sybill reached for her robe, and her hand was steady. “I told her that your family would not give her anything. And neither would I. That I had spoken with your lawyer. That I had added, and would continue to add, my weight and influence to see that Seth remains a permanent part of your family.”
“That’s something, then,” he muttered, frowning at her as she pulled on her robe.
“It’s the least I can do, isn’t it?” Her tone was frigid, distant and final. “Excuse me.” She strode into the bathroom, shut the door.
From where he stood, Phillip heard the deliberate click of the lock. “Well, fine, that’s just fine.” He snarled at the door, grabbed his jacket, then got the hell out before he made matters any worse than they already were.
* * *
THEY DIDN’T GET any better when he arrived home to find less than half a cup of coffee left in the pot. When he discovered midway through his shower that Cam had obviously used most of the hot water, he decided that just made it all perfect.
Then he stepped into his room, a towel slung around his hips, and found Seth sitting on the side of his bed.
Definitely perfect.
“Hey.” Seth eyed him steadily.
“You’re up early.”
“I thought I’d maybe go in with you for a couple of hours.”
Phillip turned to pull underwear and jeans out of his dresser. “You aren’t working today. You’ve got your friends coming over later for the party.”
“That’s not till this afternoon.” Seth lifted a shoulder. “There’s time.”
“Suit yourself.”
He’d expected Phillip to be steamed. He had a thing for Sybill, didn’t he? Seth reminded himself. It had been tough to come in here, to wait, to know he’d have to say something.
So he said the single thing that was most on his mind. “I didn’t mean to make her cry.”
Shit, was all Phillip could think. He yanked on his Jockeys. He wasn’t going to get out of this. “You didn’t. She was just due for a cry, that’s all.”
“I guess she’s pretty pissed off.”
“No, she’s not.” Resigned to it now, Phillip pulled on his jeans. “Look, women are hard to understand under the best of circumstances. These circumstances pretty much suck.”
“I guess.” Maybe he wasn’t so steamed after all. “I just sort of remembered some stuff.” Seth stared at the scars on Phillip’s chest because it was easier than looking into his eyes. And because, well, the scars were so cool. “Then she got so whacked out about it and everything.”
“Some people don’t know what to do with feelings.” He sighed, sat on the bed beside Seth, and was bitterly ashamed of himself. He’d blasted Sybill right between the eyes because he hadn’t known what to do with his feelings. “So they cry, or they yell, or they go off and sulk in a corner. She cares about you, but she doesn’t know exactly what to do about it. Or what you want her to do about it.”
“I don’t know. She’s . . . she’s not like Gloria.” His voice rose a pitch. “She’s decent. Ray was decent, too, and I’ve got—they’re like relatives, right? So I’ve got . . .”
Understanding came quickly and squeezed his heart. “You’ve got Ray’s eyes.” Phillip kept his voice matter-of-fact, knowing Seth would believe him if he said it right. “The color and the shape, but that something that was behind them, too. The something that was decent. You’ve got a sharp brain, just like Sybill. It thinks, it analyzes, it wonders. And under all that, it tries to do what’s right. What’s decent. You’ve got both of them in you.” He nudged Seth’s shoulder with his own. “Pretty cool, huh?”
“Yeah.” The smile bloomed. “It’s cool.”
“Okay, scram, or we’re never going to get out of here.”
* * *
HE ARRIVED AT the boatyard nearly forty-five minutes behind Cam and expected to get grief for it. Cam was already at the shaper, rabbeting the next run of planks. Bruce Springsteen shouted from the radio about his glory days. In defense, Phillip turned the volume down. Instantly Cam’s head came up.
“I can’t hear it over the tool unless it’s loud.”
“None of us will be able to hear if you keep blasting our ears for hours every day.”
“What? Did you say something?”
“Ha-ha.”
“Well, we’re cheerful, aren’t we?” Cam reached over and switched off the power. “So, how’s Sybill?”
“Don’t start on me.”
Cam angled his head while Seth shifted his gaze from man to man and anticipated the entertainment value of a Quinn battle. “I asked
a simple question.”
“She’ll survive.” Phillip snatched up a tool belt. “I realize you’d prefer to see her run out of town on a rail, but you’ll have to make do with the fact that I gave her a verbal bashing this morning rather than a physical one.”
“Why the hell did you do that?”
“Because she pissed me off!” Phillip shouted. “Because it all pisses me off. Especially you.”
“Fine, you want to try for a physical bashing, I’m available. But I asked a goddamn simple question.” Cam pulled the board off the shaper and heaved it toward the stack, where it landed with a clatter. “She already took a punch in the gut yesterday. Why the hell would you add to it this morning?”
“You’re defending her?” Phillip stepped forward until they were nose to nose. “You’re defending her, after all the shit you’ve handed me over her?”
“I’ve got eyes, don’t I? I saw her face last night. What the hell do you take me for?” He jabbed a finger into Phillip’s chest. “Anybody who’d kick a woman when she’s that torn up ought to have his neck snapped.”
“You son of a—” Phillip’s fist was clenched and halfway through the swing before he stopped himself. He would have enjoyed a few bloody rounds, especially since Ethan wasn’t there to break it up. But not when he was the one who deserved to be bloodied.
He unclenched his fist, spreading his fingers as he turned away to try to find some control. He saw Seth watching him with dark, interested eyes and snarled. “Don’t you start.”
“I didn’t say a word.”
“Look, I took care of her, okay?” He dragged a hand through his hair and aimed his rationalization at both of them. “I let her cry it out, patted her hand. I dumped her into a hot tub, tucked her into bed. I stayed with her. Maybe I got an hour’s sleep out of the deal, so I’m feeling just a little testy right now.”
“Why’d you yell at her?” Seth wanted to know.