“It doesn’t matter. Some things take precedence, though it’s a shame you and Nat won’t be working together.”
“That wasn’t in the plan,” he answered, his gaze steady.
“No, but still.” She hesitated a moment, then asked, “Did you really want to go to dinner, or were you being polite?”
“Polite, mainly. Though we can eat if you’re hungry.”
“I’m not really,” she said without quite looking at him. “We had a late lunch and my stomach is still on Hazaristan time anyway. But I was just thinking…”
“About Nat? Or maybe about what happened in the ballroom.”
“Both, in a way.”
“You’re thinking maybe you made a mistake, and having three at dinner would allow more time to think about it?”
“You could say that,” she answered, the words constricted in the tightness of her throat.
“You don’t have to go through with it. Say the word, the whole thing is forgotten.”
“That isn’t it. I mean, I don’t want to forget it,” she said, her gaze steady on his face. “I just…wondered if you were having second thoughts.”
He folded his arms over his chest, his face inscrutable. “You were afraid I’d decided I didn’t want to be your teacher, after all, and was using dinner as an excuse to get out of it?”
“Something like that,” she agreed in relief for his understanding.
“You thought, just possibly, that I couldn’t drum up any interest in making love to a beautiful and willing woman, or that it was just too much trouble?”
The combination of amusement and incredulity in his voice made her acutely uncomfortable. “Not exactly.”
“I guess it occurred to you that I could be insulted at being treated like a sex object? That being wanted for my body and so-called expertise hurt my feelings?”
“I didn’t mean to make it sound that way,” she protested.
“Only like a one-night stand, right? No ties, no obligations, no tomorrows?”
“Okay,” she said in fatalistic acceptance. “You really have changed your mind then.”
“Never in a million years.”
She met his gaze again. “But you said…”
“A lot of stuff, trying to find out what you wanted. I have my own misgivings, you know. I’m afraid that I’m taking advantage of you. I’m scared that you’ll recover in a day or so from whatever combination of jet lag, culture shock and self-doubt that has you in its grip, and wonder what possessed you to ask me what you did. I’m almost certain that one day soon you’ll regret the whole idea.”
A slow smile tilted her mouth, though she felt hot all over as she repeated, “Never in a million years.”
The overseer’s cottage was quiet around them, so quiet it seemed that they must have it to themselves. Beyond the dim hallway, with its high ceiling and indefinable smells of cypress wood and ancient dust, could be heard the calls of crickets and night insects, and the faint sigh of a breeze through the great, overhanging oaks. They barely noticed as they watched each other in the soft gold-tinted light. Then Wade caught her hand, holding it as they strolled the few feet to their room. She glanced at him, smiling a little because she couldn’t help it.
At the door, Wade used his key, then flipped on the light and stepped inside for a quick reconnaissance. As he gave the all clear, she crossed the threshold and closed the door firmly behind her. Her hand was still on the knob as she turned to face him.
“Now then,” he said as he tossed the key ring on the table and sauntered toward her, reaching to pull her into his arms. “Where were we when class was interrupted?”
The low timbre of his voice seemed to vibrate through her. His grasp was sure, his body inviting in its heat. She moved closer with an inarticulate murmur. The feel of his arms closing around her, drawing her against him, set off a flare of need inside her that was almost frightening in its intensity. It flowed through her like a drug, altering her senses so she moved in a dreamlike languor, molding her body to his body, her mouth to his mouth, as he kissed her.
He was just a man, yet seemed more. His strength surrounded her; his internal power attracted her with magnetic force. A part of her deplored such a primitive reaction, though a more basic portion reveled in it.
He tasted of magic, a combination of sweetness and passion so potent that she slid her hands over his upper chest and shoulders and around to clasp the back of his neck. Drawing his head down, she increased the pressure of his lips.
He resisted, trailing a line of kisses from the corner of her mouth and over the curve of her cheek to her jawline. “I don’t want to rush you or to hurt you,” he said against her hair. “There’s a time for wild, passionate sex, but also a time for something more tame.”
“I don’t feel tame,” she whispered.
His breath fanned her ear as it left him in a quiet rush. “If we get wild right now, I promise it won’t last long, and I’ll get a lot more out of it than you will. The idea isn’t to end this awesome torture but for both of us to enjoy it.”
“You mean for both of us to come?”
“Now where did you hear that?”
“Teenagers talk, not to mention women, with or without a veil. So is this lesson number four?”
“I don’t know. I’ve lost count.”
“I haven’t.”
He loosened his hold enough to turn his neck and rest his forehead against hers. “Chloe, Chloe,” he said, a sound near a groan in his voice. “You’re going to be the death of me.”
“But not yet,” she said with a private smile. “At least I hope not.”
An answering grin tilted his mouth. She watched it form even as she moved closer to stop it with her lips. His chest lifted with his quick-drawn breath, then his arms closed more tightly around her.
Sensations crowded in on her like small blows, the scents of warm cotton, lingering bath soap and virile male, the faint prickliness of his shaved skin, the abrasion of the minutely beaded surface of his tongue. Her eyelids drifted shut as she savored the impressions, taking them inside her and allowing them to merge with the warm current of desire that ran in her veins.
Was how she felt the sum of what he was doing and what he was, or was it produced by her own mind? She wasn’t sure, nor could she think it mattered. They were here together, the two of them. The time was right.
He slid his hand from her waist, upward over her rib cage to a spot just under her breast. Pausing there, he pressed his palm flat, as if feeling the rapid beat of her heart. The warmth of his touch penetrated her blouse, increased the heat of her skin. An odd, waiting suspense gripped her so she caught her breath. Then gently, carefully he cupped her breast.
It felt inevitable. The stroke of his thumb across her nipple sent a slow, sweet thrill dancing along her nerve endings and whirling into the lower part of her body. So exquisite was it that she relaxed against him with an almost primitive need to seek his support, to give in to the delicious malaise that flowed through her.
Glancing behind him to locate the armchair at the desk, Wade stepped back, drawing her down onto his lap as he seated himself. The muscled firmness of his thighs under her, the enclosing power of his arms around her, were so perfect that she clung to him, wanting, needing more. She touched his face, tracing the hollow of his cheek, the square line of his jaw, the indentation in his chin. As he claimed her breast once more, she gave a soft gasp. “Would…would this be foreplay?” she asked as a distraction from her small, involuntary sound of pleasure.
“It would, or at least a small part of it. Do you want me to stop?”
“No.” The word was a single breath of sound.
“Did you know that you have approximately four times as many nerve endings in your nipples as I do, or any man does?”
She shook her head, a jerky motion.
He brushed gently back and forth with his thumb. “Of course you’d feel this even more without all the cloth in the way.”
Abruptly there was nothing she wanted so much as to have his touch on her bare skin. Lifting her hands to the buttons of her blouse, she began to slip them from their holes. Her movements were not exactly nimble. He seemed not to mind, but followed them with close attention, leaning to press his lips to the soft, blue-veined curves as they were exposed. Then the last button was undone and her blouse fell open.
She’d bought underwear, but decided against wearing it because it felt too confining after years of going without. She didn’t need it in any case. Her breasts were high and firm from years of manual labor in house and garden. That Wade suspected the lack of panties along with no bra was almost certain from the way his movements stilled, becoming rigid.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, even as she shrugged from her blouse and dropped it to the floor.
“No way,” he answered hoarsely. “It’s right, almost too right for comfort—or maybe for sanity.”
That he seemed to be as affected by her as she was by him was good to know, since it made her feel less at the mercy of his whims. It gave her the courage to go on. “Now what?”
The only answer was a distracted sound as he bent his head and traced the tip of his tongue around one gentle peak before delving into the valley between it and the other. Scaling the second mound with slow concentration, he captured the nipple with delicate suction.
She was melting, flowing against him in boneless accommodation, pliant under his hands. Her will seemed to have vanished. She had no purpose except this. To consider that she might have lived without being held like this, by this man, was insupportable. That Ahmad or some other might have kissed her, touched and caressed her, was such a horror in her mind that she shivered. Pressing closer still, she threaded her fingers through Wade’s hair then held him to her, rocking a little in the disturbance of her mind.
His grasp tightened, then he swept his hand along her thigh and hip, testing, kneading the resilient flesh. As his questing palm brushed the hem of her skirt, he slipped his fingers beneath it to follow the smooth curve of her leg to her knee. He made small circles along her outer thigh in sensuous exploration, the movements spreading ever wider until he reached the silken inner surface.
A muscle in her leg jerked as he trailed his fingertips over that sensitive area, nearing the apex of her thighs then retreating over and over in a slow sequence that reached ever higher. She drew breath then forgot to let it out. She wanted to close her legs, yet at the same time to open them wider. Suspended between warring impulses, she was perfectly still.
“Did you learn in school that skin is an organ of the body?” he asked in distracted softness. “It responds to any touch, which is one reason a massage feels so good. But extra nerve endings surround every opening, the mouth, of course, ears, everything, though none are quite as sensitive as…this one.”
She shivered as if with fever as he barely touched the small mound above that opening. “I…know.”
He lifted his hand, began to move it away. With an inarticulate murmur, she closed her fingers on his wrist to hold him in place.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
For long seconds, neither of them moved. Then she released him and reached to tug his T-shirt from the waistband of his jeans. She skimmed her hand underneath, avoiding his bandage, and spread her fingers over his chest.
He was so hot, also amazingly firm where she was soft, with ridges of muscle where she had next to none. At the flat plane of his waist was a line of softly curling hair that she followed upward to where it widened into a diamond shape at the hollow of his throat. His nipples were half buried in the soft thatch. They seemed almost as sensitive as hers were, though smaller and flatter. To tease them into tight nubs was fascinating. In that pursuit she was able to pretend, at least, that she didn’t notice as he returned to his exacting exploration, questing ever higher and deeper.
But Chloe did notice, could not ignore that more intimate caress. Her cheeks felt on fire, her pulse throbbed with the tumbling race of the blood in her veins. Her senses expanded until she was exquisitely aware of the man who held her, the firmness and strength of his long form, the thick crispness of the hair that feathered back from his temples, the hard thudding of his heart against her.
That he was so affected brought the rise of an odd tenderness inside her. She had thought him armored by his competence and bound word, his military training and family ties, so that he needed no one, had no weakness of the flesh or otherwise. She’d been wrong. There was perilous affinity in the notion that here in this secluded room they were each at the mercy of their doubts, needs and fears.
Lifting her mouth for his kiss once more, she probed the smooth lining of his mouth with delicate curiosity, tasting it, running her tongue over the glassy edges of his teeth. Venturing deeper, she touched his tongue, retreated, advanced again until he joined her in sinuous play and then set a rhythm that tantalized with promises of something more. Enthralled by the incredible intimacy, she reveled in it, accepting yet barely registering his gentle, probing encroachment.
The sensory pleasure of it spiraled suddenly to a peak, rippling through her in a shock wave. In its wake, she was adrift in wanton desire, accepting, unable to think or do anything other than allow whatever he might choose to try next.
He didn’t stop there, didn’t stop at all, but fed the ardor growing between them with patience and consummate refinement. Chloe abandoned pretense of any kind, allowing him unimpeded access to her body, helping him as he pushed the sandals from her feet, skimmed her skirt down over her hips. She flattened her hand against the board hardness of his belly as he kicked out of his boots, rid himself of jeans and shirt. Rising then, she let him lift her to the soft contours of the mattress that topped the antique bed.
The night was warm and dark around them, and they had no reason to hurry. With warm lips, careful hands and fierce restraint, they sought the curves, hollows, springing hardness and liquid softness of their male and female bodies. They spoke in whispers, with sighs and half-moaned pleas as they learned the shaping under the bones, the texture of hair and skin, the hidden sites of most vivid response, and the outermost limits of endurance. Instinct moved them, and also watchful attention to signals, generosity of spirit and the ultimate grace of caring. With these responses, they refined the moment until it shimmered with unbearable tension, allowing the rise of something so near to devotion that it seemed an acceptable counterfeit.
Shivering and desperate, then, they moved together as one accord. He hovered above her with iron-hard muscles, silently asking entry. She guided him, fitted his strutted heat to her softness, and was still in careful accommodation as he pressed inside. She felt a single burning sting, but the way had been well prepared and the momentary pang was banished by fullness, pressure, and such beatific completion that she felt intoxicated with it.
Still, it seemed there should be something more. She stirred, rising a little to encompass more of him, press more against him. He answered that movement, easing into a slow, pulsating tempo that ebbed and flowed, steadily increasing. She met it, matched it, felt in its cadence the joyous music that animated the dance of life.
It took them, transfigured them. She accepted his strong surges against her, felt them dissolving the anxiety inside her, used them to remold some essential part of her being into a woman with the courage to accept her own needs and impulses. She wanted him deeper, could not bear to be denied.
As she opened herself wider in heated demand, he met it in unstinting effort and endless power, taking her higher, further still from the person she had once been, nearer to something that might well be divine. And in the quiet night, despite the threat of death that waited, they found the way to true paradise, or to the only one that this mad and puny earth allows.
14
The glow of daylight behind the drapes woke Chloe. Though she opened her eyes, she lay without moving while she examined the sense of well-being that hovered inside her. A par
t of it was the soft mattress on which she lay, the fresh sheets and the coolness that circulated in the room. The main thing, however, was the man who lay close against her.
She should be used to waking beside Wade, one way or another, after several days of it. This was definitely different. His long body was nestled against hers from waist to ankles, and his arm rested across the curve of her hip in a near possessive embrace. It felt natural and comfortable, as if they’d slept that way for years, even decades.
Impressions from the night before flickered through her mind. Heat moved over her, even as a small smile curved her mouth. It had been quite an initiation. Though she was aware of a little soreness here and there, she felt free and whole in a way she hadn’t been in a long time. Whatever inhibitions she’d had were gone.
Wade seemed to be asleep still. That was hardly a surprise. He deserved all the rest he could get.
She eased from the bed and stumbled, yawning hugely, into the bathroom. It was odd to see herself in such a large mirror, at almost full figure. The woman who stared back at her seemed like a stranger. Her hair was tousled, her lips swollen, her cheeks pink from beard chafing, and her eyes marked by dark shadows. Though her gaze was bright, a species of apprehension lingered in its depths. She looked replete, well loved, but not really content.
It was a trick of the lighting, nothing more. Or else the grief and worry of the past few days. She’d cried in her sleep during the night before, while dreaming of Treena. It wasn’t the first occasion, though she’d had little time to come to grips with that painful loss. Wade had held her, offering consolation, expecting nothing in return. Then there was the uncertain future. She hated the idea that others were in danger because of her. Someone, possibly some of the Benedicts, might die before this thing was done. Certainly, any misgivings she felt had nothing to do with a future to be lived without Wade Benedict.
Wade Page 19