“So…maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, either.” She tried to gesture, but her hands were still caught in the silly sweater and her action only aroused his sympathy. He reached for the fabric knot, wanting to help, wanting to leave, wanting to kiss her for no good reason he could fathom. Intent on the task, he wasn’t prepared when she bumped against him and planted an awkward kiss on the lower half of his mouth. And he wasn’t prepared when she corrected her aim and nudged his lips with a determined kiss. And he wasn’t at all prepared when she sighed into the kiss and his foolish heart changed his mind about leaving.
Chapter Ten
“Hallie,” Rik whispered, his hands still on the sweater sleeves, his lips still distracted by hers, his body still interested, his better judgment on red alert “Tell me, now. Is this your idea of a good-night kiss?”
She nudged his lips again. “I don’t know yet It might be just the beginning of a good night”
He freed the knot in record time and drew the cardigan from her hands. As it fell to the floor, he moved his palms over her forearms and past her elbows. “Next question…is this your idea of a seduction?” She tensed slightly. He hoped it was just his imagination, a little paranoia left over from the last time they’d been this close.
She confirmed his assessment with another ultrasensuous kiss. “If I say yes, what are you going to do?”
He tested her sincerity with a husky suggestion. ‘I’m going to kiss you,” he said. “A long, slow, wet kiss that may last the rest of the night. And we’re both going to enjoy the hell out of it”.
“We are?”
She didn’t sound overly confident. He tried again. “If I say yes, what are you going to do?”
“Worry.”
Rik frowned, wishing now he’d gone while the going was good. “When a man suggests he’s going to kiss you, Hallie, there are only two answers. Yes, no or a variation thereof.”
“I’m not worried about the kiss, Rik. It’s the—” She pulled away. “What did I do with my glasses?”
“They’re in the bathroom, but unless you feel you just have to get a closer look at me, you don’t need them. I can tell you, I look even more confused than I sound.”
“Damn,” she said, which didn’t shed any light on the subject at all. “Damn, damn, damn, damn.”
“My sentiments exactly.”
She looked up, frowned and raised her chin with decision. “All right. I didn’t want to have to tell you this, but I can’t see any way out of it”
“You are married.” He wouldn’t have believed he could feel any worse, but suddenly, anticipating what she was about to confess, he felt terrible. Worse than terrible. Sick with disappointment.
“No.” The brisk denial clicked with impatience and truth, and his spirits rebounded. “But I was married, and that’s the problem. Do you remember my telling you about my disastrous wedding? Well, this may be hard to imagine, but the honeymoon was worse.”
He ran through a mental list of the things that could ruin a honeymoon, avoiding anything that couldn’t be classified as an act of God. “A hurricane?”
“No.”
“Flood?”
“The weather was perfect.”
Not an act of God, then. Maybe an accident. “Food poisoning?”
“No. Everything was perfect. Except the sex. It was…”
“Not good?” he suggested, hoping to spare her the embarrassment of confiding further details. Or maybe he only wanted to spare himself. To keep from feeling the sympathetic and protective pangs he was already experiencing.
“Worse. It was awful.”
He didn’t want to know this, Rik thought. He really didn’t. “I’ve heard that happens sometimes. All the pressures of the wedding and the travel and—”
“It didn’t happen.”
“The excitement.” He stopped cold. “You didn’t have sex on your honeymoon?”
She shook her head no and repeated, “It didn’t happen.”
“Well, I can see where a couple might be overtired and decide not to…” Actually, he couldn’t see any explanation at all. Not with Hallie. If he’d been there… That was a stupid thing to think, much less imagine. “So the honeymoon wasn’t great,” he finished. “There’s more to a marriage than great sex.”
She took a deep breath, which only seemed to accentuate the pain this subject obviously caused her. “You probably don’t want to hear about this and I wouldn’t even mention it except that, well, I wanted you to know I’m not a tease. That’s the reason I’ve been wearing your sweater all day. I was self-conscious about baring my shoulders and—and advertising a product I couldn’t deliver.”
Rik suddenly developed an overwhelming dislike for her ex-husband, whoever he was.
“And there is a reason I’m having so much difficulty getting past this initial awkwardness. I really do want to be with you, to…to…”
He reached for her then, wanting to hold her, comfort her, ease her past whatever awkwardness she felt, stop her from confiding in him about her past sexual experiences. But she stepped over to the bed and stood there, as if she were waiting for the ax to fall.
“There’s no easy way for me to say this, Rik. If I could pretend it didn’t matter and had nothing to do with what probably now isn’t even going to happen between you and me, I wouldn’t say it, but…” She took a deep breath and exhaled with a rush of words. “Brad and I didn’t have sex before the wedding. I wanted to wait and he didn’t get a choice. Ironically, if I hadn’t been so obstinate about being a virgin on my wedding day, the honeymoon wouldn’t have been such a disaster. But I was, and it was, and the fact is, I had this small physical deformity that I didn’t know about until…well, it prevented intercourse, and so, consequently, there was a lot of frustration and anger and upset and it ruined the honeymoon.”
She drew in another breath. “My physical problem was corrected with a single visit to the doctor’s office, but sex was never very good after that anyway, and Brad found solace elsewhere and we divorced, but the reason I told you all this is because I’m terribly attracted to you and I really thought it might be different with you. But I can’t help getting tense and worried and afraid that it won’t be different and…” She shrugged. “I thought you ought to know that even if I ripped off all your clothes and shoved you onto the bed, you’re bound to be very disappointed when it comes to fulfilling the rest of the fantasy.”
Her shoulders drooped and she sank onto the edge of the mattress, as if having to tell him had been so difficult she no longer had the energy to stay standing. Which was all right with him. He was feeling a bit shaky himself. “Hallie?” he said gently. “How many men have there been since your divorce?”
For the. first time since she’d begun telling her story, she blushed. “Two,” she said. “But only one who made it past the…preliminary stage.”
“Two”, he said, shaking his head. “A woman like you.”
“I know. I can’t believe it, either. You’d think I’d have enough sense to run like a maniac the minute an attractive man glances my way, wouldn’t you?” She looked up with a crooked frown that set his heart askew. “But here I am and here you are and here’s yet another dismal episode in the history of my love life. I am sorry, Rik. I should never have led you on as I did. I shouldn’t have advertised a product I couldn’t deliver.”
If he could have gotten his hands on her ex-husband at that moment, Rik knew he would have gained immense satisfaction from taking the guy on a scenic helicopter tour right into the jaws of Hurricane Bonnie. He’d scare the living daylights out of the little twerp, settle the score with the sorry excuse for a husband who’d left Hallie in this condition, told her she advertised sex every time she bared her shoulders. And he had a couple of extra seats in the copter for any other man who’d added to her lack of self-confidence in the sexual arena. “You don’t owe any man an apology, Hallie. Least of all me. Your experience is atypical at best and just plain unlucky at worst. What I can
’t understand is why you’ve let it bother you for so long? Aren’t there counselors who specialize in this sort of thing?”
She looked offended. “I’m not going to tell a stranger about this.”
“You told me.”
“Only because I thought you deserved an explanation.”
“You didn’t have to explain. You’re not responsible for my sexual satisfaction.”
“You have to admit we were heading for a frustrating and disappointing situation.”
“I’ll admit nothing of the kind.”
“No matter what you say now, Rik, this evening would have ended just as badly one way or the other. I saved you from an embarrassing moment in the near future when you would have had to pretend you weren’t disappointed and I’d have had to pretend it didn’t bother me to have been the cause of it.”
“Do you feel responsible for everything that goes wrong in the world, Hallie? Sex shouldn’t be this big an obstacle in your life.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve probably never had bad sex.”
“No, in my experience, there’s no such thing.”
“In my experience, there’s nothing else. I ought to take a vow of celibacy and make the world a better place for the men with whom I come into contact.”
He wanted to smile at the pointless melancholy in her voice, but he didn’t “That would be a tragedy. Especially for this particular male.”
She sighed. “It’s very nice of you to say so, Rik, but trust me. Weddings are as close as I ever need to get to fantasy. I figure that for every couple I send off on a wave of wonderful memories, it makes up a little for the disaster my own wedding was. And if they live happily ever after…well, it pleases me to believe I had a tiny part in launching them toward a long and fulfilling marriage.”
He thought she was selling herself pretty short, but it was obvious she’d made up her mind, and that left him with no place to go. He couldn’t touch her. Or kiss her. Not now. Not when she was so thoroughly convinced she was the Medusa of sex, turning men to stone with her ineptitude. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to prove to her how wrong she was, but there were rules about that sort of thing, and now that she’d made him privy to her very personal, very intimate history, he couldn’t make a move unless she made one first.
The silence stretched awkwardly and he glanced toward the window, where the night was peering in like a hungry man at a well-laid table. “I guess I’ll get my things together and go.”
“Where?”
“I’ll bunk with Jack…until Stephanie arrives,” he said, startled by the realization that since he’d met Hallie, he’d hardly given the woman of his dreams a fleeting thought. “That way I can keep him out of trouble.”
“I thought you were the one who tried to get him into trouble.”
“Lately, I’ve just been trying to save his butt.”
“You’re quite the rescuer, aren’t you, Rik?”
“Some guys are born heroes,” he said with a shrug. “Jack, for instance. But me? No, I just sort of fall into it by default. Like with you. If I’d had any self-preservation skills at all, I’d have developed a passionate interest in televised golf the minute you walked into the bar. But you looked so bedraggled and lost and so determined not to show it, I all but leapt over a dozen rattan bar stools to rescue you from thirst.”
“Bedraggled?” Her hand went to the feathery bangs on her forehead as if the puppeteer had just pulled the coordinating string. “I told you it was a bad haircut.”
“Yes, and I told you I liked it excessively.”
“Oh, no, you didn’t.” Her unexpectedly saucy smile shook his resolve. “You said it wasn’t that bad.”
“But you didn’t believe me, did you?” He shook his head in wry humor. “What would it take to convince you? Letting my hair grow out into the same style?”
“Don’t do it, Rik. You’ll be sorry.”
His lips curved with wry humor. “I hate to be bothered with flyaway hair…that’s a problem for helicopter pilots, you know.”
“I can imagine.”
“Hallie?”
Her gaze met his and his pulse quickened. “I think your haircut is tremendously flattering. You’re a very lovely, very desirable woman and I sincerely hope you never take that vow of celibacy.”
She looked, as forlorn as a single wilting rose. “Oh, I’ll probably be tormenting men for years to come.”
Rik watched her with a vaguely alarming resignation, realizing he had long since passed the point of wanting to leave, of being able to just walk away. He was suddenly, resolutely certain that sometimes rules were made to be broken. “Hallie? Could we start this evening one more time? Go back to talking about your haircut?”
She looked at him, frustration, curiosity and hope mingling in her hazel eyes. “Why would we want to do that?”
“So I can tell you how much I love the way your hair feathers around your face.” He took her hands in his, and pulled her to her feet. “And how it wisps across your forehead and curves under at the back of your neck.” He cupped her face in his palms and worked his fingertips into her hair. “And how it’s all I can do to keep from burying my fingers in it’ He drew her inexorably closer, letting his mouth descend slowly to ward hers. “So I can tell you how desperately I want to make love to you.”
“You’re just saying that to cheer me up.”
“Believe me,” he whispered against her earlobe. ’I’m not that unselfish.”
“But, Rik, I—”
Her voice squeaked on the words and he pressed a fingertip against her lips, shushing her. “Hallie, unless the curtains catch fire or the glass in the window shatters, I don’t want you to utter another sound.”
“Oh….”
He took advantage of the rounded shape of her lips, and with every ounce of sincerity he could muster, he kissed her. A long, slow, wet kiss he hoped might actually convince her not to talk anymore. Gathering her protectively into his arms, he drew her with him, down into the soft, enveloping comfort of the bed.
Hallie fell hard. Oh, she landed on the mattress, sure. But her heart fell with a thump…halfway between hope and despair, squarely between the certainty of inevitable disappointment and the possibility a miracle could occur and save her from a lifetime of longing for something more than she could ever have.
Rik was solid fantasy, from the point where his breath mingled with hers to the weight of the leg he draped so erotically across her thigh. His body paid homage to the tremors of yearning that shimmered through her like pretty lies, and there was an overpowering intimacy in the provocative kisses he offered for her approval.
As his lips moved along the curve of her neck to sup at the hollow of her throat, Hallie hung suspended between knowing she had to stop him and knowing she’d rather die than utter a word of denial. But she’d done everything in her power to give him fair warning. It was out of her hands and in his. Oh brother, was she ever in his hands. With every touch, he demanded her response, her absolute attention. There wasn’t room for argument or fear or the memory of any other place or any other time.
Rik held her, and it was the way she’d always dreamed of being held by a man. He kissed her, and her heart leapt like a long-lost lover into his keeping. He touched her breast, and she ached to bare it to the massage of his seeking fingers. She wanted to bare her body and her soul to him, to lie naked in his arms, to invite him to explore each untouched, unclaimed, unbearably achy part of her. She wasn’t afraid Not with Rik. Fear of pain and disappointment was a conditioned response, something she could fight past, conquer. She knew, without knowing how she knew, that he would guide her through the jungle of intimacy to a place of mutual pleasure. A sharing place. A place of emotional communion. She trembled with that awareness, with the need to let this moment be the one she would remember from this time forward.
Her fingertips curled insistently into his shoulders when he pulled her against him and his tongue plied her lips, teasing, tas
ting and finally plunging deeply inside her mouth. Sensations ran rampant in a frenzy of impulses. Should she touch him? Where? She’d gotten this far before and…No, no, she hadn’t. She’d never burned with such heat, never wanted anything as desperately as she wanted to please Rik at this moment.
She pushed back and reached for his shirt, fumbled with a button, then made a mighty effort to rip off the shirt. And wound up with her hand trapped and crumpled into a useless fist between their respective bodies. He stopped kissing her…sort of. His lips were still there, against hers, but his breath was warm on her cheeks and chin. “Are you trying to rip off my clothes?” he asked in a hoarse whisper as he nibbled at the corner of her mouth.
“Yes, but it would be easier if you’d cooperate.”
“Making love doesn’t have to be rough, but it shouldn’t be easy. Fight a little for your pleasure, Hallie. Claim what you want. Take it.”
“Take your shirt off,” she said with more confidence than she felt. Could she just order him to do that? What if he said no? What if he—
He unbuttoned the shirt, his large hands moving down the row of buttons with amazing agility, his knuckles brushing with sure intent against her breasts, her stomach, her self-control. “There,” he said as he tossed the Hawaiian print aside and settled again beside her. “Is this what you wanted?”
“Yes…for the moment.” Her fingers splayed across his bare chest, enchanted by the hair-roughened texture, delighting in the power he had given her with his ready capitulation. No other man had ever asked what she wanted, much less told her to take it. “Kiss me,” she commanded.
He did…but not like before. No, this time the kiss went longer and deeper, grew more demanding. She decided to get drunk on his kisses. She would command him to kiss her until she couldn’t remember her own name. But for as long as she lived she would remember the name of the man who kissed her until she was intoxicated with his taste, his scent, his touch.
“Rik.” She didn’t even know she’d whispered his name until he pulled back to stroke the hair at her forehead.
Please Say I Do Page 16