There was still some resistance in her, but she did not try to get away from him anymore. He made her sit down with him on the couch, settling her in his lap. He undid her hair so he could wrap it around his hand, pulling her head back a little, forcing her to look at him. Her lips had parted under his grip, and he could not stop gazing at them, so inviting and so close, begging for the kiss.
“I keep thinking, did you do this with her, too, did you look at her just like that, did she feel what I feel now, did you say the same words? Did you? Did you wish her to surrender to you like you want me to surrender to you now? Was this same look on your face when you wanted to make love to her and you could think of nothing else but naked body in your arms?”
To his surprise, he sensed laughter rising in him, even though it was bitter, filled with years of regret. “You know nothing of me yet. After all the intimacy we’ve shared, you still don’t know me at all. Yeah, I looked at her like I’m looking at you now. And yes, I was thinking of a girl’s naked body in my arms, a girl I’d held a long time ago, one who was wonderful beyond description and loved me like no other. Yes, Naomi, I’ve had many, many beautiful women over the years, ardent, shy, passionate, sporty, slim as willows and plump like cherries, and they came in all colors too. Some I talked into swooning submission, and others took me, aggressive and sophisticated, and others simply happened.” He saw he was saying things she did not want to hear in the way she closed her eyes and tried to turn her head away, but he did not allow it. “I had strangers and left them before the sun rose; with others I stayed for a while, a few months, a few weeks. But through it all, always, there was the image of the girl I kissed in Geneva, oh, the sweetness and miracle of it. The girl I took to my hotel room a couple of nights later, so shy, so afraid, and yet so ready for me, the one who could hardly wait for me to take off her clothes and see her naked and touch her skin, and then love her, take away her virginity! I was almost in a panic, I was so afraid of hurting you, afraid that I would make you hate me from the shock, but no; I found there was abandon there, and passion, and the most tender love. I don’t know why, as lovely as you were, you were still untouched, and why you let me be the first, but by God, Naomi, every single act of sex with another always had to compare to that, and they never held up.” He nodded to himself in reminiscence, reliving those moments. “All the time, all through the time we were together, I was always afraid you would someday tell me you’d had enough of me and wanted to find out how it would be with a different man, if someone else could make you feel more, better, otherwise. That you would tell me you were curious how sex with another would be, and I could not be your only one. That you’d say to me…” He grinned at her sadly. “Say to me you had found out Sal was the one you really loved. There were so many who wanted you, who tried to win your attention when we were in LA. I lived in permanent fear of losing you.”
“There weren’t,” Naomi replied a little sullenly, “I would have noticed.”
At that, he laughed out loud. The tension went out of his frame and he let his free hand wander around her hips to draw her closer. “I’m not done. I have explained to you in great and sordid detail how I spent my sex life during our separation, and now I want to hear why you refused to find other lovers. And don’t give me that crap again that no one looked at you and you could not imagine anyone but me.”
He tugged her hair a little harder, bending her head back farther, exposing the smooth stretch of her throat. “Need to kiss you first,” he whispered. “I need to kiss you real bad.”
Naomi gazed at him from large, hesitant eyes. “Did you do things with all those others that you haven’t done with me?”
Jon nearly dropped her.
“Did you? Did you give others what you did not dare give to me?”
His gaze wandered away from her and out the window to the bay, where the mail ship was leaving the harbor again on its way up north. The big black hulk darkened the room for a few minutes before it had passed the hotel and was well on its path to the open sea again.
“Not in any way that mattered. No.”
“I did not leave you because I did not love or desire you anymore,” she said after a moment’s thought. “Then it would have been easy. I left you, and I took all my desire for you with me, I even dreamed of you. I dreamed of you in every manner you can imagine. I woke in the middle of the night, hot and panting, still feeling you. In my dreams, you would come to me and never ask, just do as you pleased, and I would yield, pleading, begging for you. Then I would wake, my arms empty, my body empty, my heart empty. The echo of your voice, fading in the night. It was so hard not to crawl to the phone and call the office and ask Sal for your number.”
“You silly little bird,” Jon said softly. “You stupid, silly little bird. And I would have been there, I would have flown to you, come here to pluck you up. I would have come straight to your bed and made those dreams come true. Naomi, why, for God’s sake, why? If your longing was so great, why? Why did you do this to us, why give us all this pain?”
Naomi lay in his arms, toying with his shirt buttons, opening them one after the other, softly touching his skin under the fabric, her fingers lightly brushing the hairs on his chest.
“You had better stop.” He shifted restlessly. “You might end up on the carpet after all, flat on your back, with a starved, wild male on top of you. But at least I can kiss you now, can’t I? Is this terrible scene over?”
She did not answer, only sighed in something like tired resignation.
“Say you’ll marry me, Naomi. Say it. Tell me you are still mine, tell me you are not going to rip our lives into shreds again. Tell me we can go back upstairs in a little while and your terrible father and his Viking brother won’t chop off my head in their fury for causing you sorrow? Will I have a bride, walking up to me in a lovely gown and standing beside me? Will I?”
She freed herself from the hand entangled in her hair and climbed from his embrace, even though he was unwilling to let her go, protesting that he had not gotten that kiss yet.
“And you won’t get that kiss,” Naomi replied, “because I know where it would lead, and that can’t happen now. I need to change and do my hair, you mussed it all up. And then we will go and meet the crowd upstairs. We will put a good face on this disaster, Jon, and we’ll get married. I’m not going to send them all away again and waste all the food and flowers. Only…”
“Don’t frighten me anymore, Naomi. Tell me you’ll marry me because you want me, not because you can’t see a way out of it. Because if that’s the reason, I think I’ll pass. I don’t want you as my duty wife; I want you for love alone.”
He watched her walk to the wardrobe, buttoning up his shirt again, the feel of her soft fingertips still on his skin, the promising, gentle touch that gave him the hope that all would be well in the end.
“You’re getting me as your wife, Jon,” he heard her tired voice say. “Let that be enough for now. I’ll have to find a way to deal with my imagination and my guilt. It may take a while.”
She returned carrying a somber, dark grey linen dress. “She said she wanted your baby and you would not give her one. There must have been more to it than just an affair, Jon, and I feel guilty for breaking it up. I should never have told Joshua about you. I destroyed her life, her hope for a life with you.”
Jon nodded thoughtfully. “Yes, only there would never have been either one. No life, no baby. Not with Sophie, not with any other. It doesn’t matter what she thought would happen or what she wanted. I was not prepared to give it. And making a child, Naomi, as you should know, takes two. It takes two, and it should be done in love, after wishing for it to happen.”
Oblivious to his stare, she dropped the clothes she had been wearing and slowly shook out the new dress before letting it slide down over her head.
“Yes, only it didn’t work that way with ours, either, right?” she said. “I don’t remember us planning for a baby when Joshua was conceived.”
; “Ah.” He rose from the couch to help her with the zipper in the back. “But then, we were in love. Every time we had sex. I loved you through every moment of it. Still do, even when you turn me around like you do now. I can’t help it. Maybe, if I could, I would cut you out of my heart and be done with it, just to make life easier and not be in this state of turmoil and anxiety all the time. But I can’t.”
The grey did not suit her; it made her skin look bleak and brought out the deep shadows under her eyes. When she knotted up her hair and pinned it into a tight bun on her neck, he shook his head at her.
“No. Take that off. We are going to celebrate for the next few days, and you look ready to go to a funeral. Even if you feel like a sinner, put on something pretty, for God’s sake. And when you have taken that off, toss it into the bay, right after your lyrics. It’s the saddest, most unbecoming piece of clothing I have ever seen on you.”
“She looked so young. How old is she anyway?”
Jon, busy flattening her crumpled lyrics, replied without thinking, “Twenty-four.”
He looked up when no immediate reply came to see her picking up the diamond necklace he had bought for her in London. She put it on.
“You told her you had made a commitment.”
“Ah.” Incongruously, his first thought was that she should indeed accept the offer to write movie scripts; her timing for the dramatic was that good. The thought nearly made him smile, but he lowered his head again so it would not show and upset her again.
“Well, darling, I’ll tell you something. Of course I made a commitment, didn’t I? That’s what I call asking a woman to marry me and giving her a ring. Come what may, I’m as committed as hell to marrying you. And now I’ll even go upstairs and face your frightening family, I’m that committed.”
He could see the grin pulling on her lips.
“And since we are on this commitment thing, you might say again that you want to marry me too, and from the heart, if you please. Don’t tell me you locked me out all these nights and now there won’t be a reward!”
Naomi left the dinner party well before the others, exhausted by the stress of the day and too much champagne and good food.
After showering and combing out her wet hair, she slipped on her prettiest nightgown and wandered through the room, straightening cushions, collecting the last few pages of her lyrics and putting them back on the desk, and closing up the piano. She even lit some candles, certain that she would not be spending the night alone.
But he did not come.
The hotel grew quiet. She could see from the shadows on the deck that the lights in the dining room had gone out, leaving only the lobby illuminated.
Restlessly she wandered through the room, drawing the curtains, then opening them again. She got a glass of water and settled on the couch, listening, hoping, waiting.
Barefoot, in her nightgown, she quietly made her way up the stairs. She knew she was weak and throwing herself at him like a wanton, but she could not stop herself. He would laugh at her, and take advantage of her in a thorough and single-minded manner, but she would feel a lot better when the sun came up. The tension would be gone.
Light was seeping from under the studio door. Naomi stood for a moment, her hand on the knob, her heart beating wildly, her breath fast now that she had made her decision.
Jon lay on his bed, reading a book by the light of a small lamp. His glasses had slipped down his nose, and he was dressed only in boxers, his hair in wild tufts. He looked up in surprise when she entered, a sylph in a flowing cloud of silk, black hair falling around her like a veil, feet bare and pale under the hem of her gown.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Taking off his glasses, he laid the book down. “I am dangerous. If you come closer…”
Naomi closed the door behind her and walked over to him.
“How very enticing,” he growled softly, the velvet tone of his voice sensual and deep as he shifted his long body to make room for her on the narrow bed. “Tempting fate, I see. Come then, fairy queen. Share my blanket.”
He did not touch her as she settled beside him, but remained propped on his elbow and watched as she stretched out on her back, locks spilling on his pillow, neckline slipping, silk gliding over her body in slithering folds.
“Now, here we have the ultimate seduction. What am I supposed to do about you? I dare not touch you; I know what would come of that. I dare not stay away from you, I fear that’s not what you want. You have come to torment me, and witness my turmoil. How evil, dear heart. How utterly evil and wonderful.”
Her only response was a steady, dark gaze.
“If only I knew,” he went on, his voice ever softer, “what you want from me. Do you wish for some caresses, some gentle lovemaking, or do you wish to unleash the wild beast here on this simple cot?”
A soft sound as she drew a breath, her eyelids fluttering, a slight movement of her hips. He looked up and down her supine form. “Ten days is a very long time. I can feel every minute of it and I am starved for you. You walk into danger willingly, my sweet dove, and you might not get away unscathed. You might get pinned down and ravished, coming here to my den in this nothing of a gown and lying down with me. I can feel the heat of your body, and how much you want me.”
His hand came to rest on her belly.
“But no; I gave a promise. I will not make love to you again until you are my wife, and lawfully mine. I’ll pass.”
Naomi touched his chest with lingering fingertips, drawing them down to his stomach. The muscles there tightened visibly, beautifully, as her fingers trailed tauntingly lower.
“You are seducing me.” Jon grabbed for her hand to stop her exploring. “Do you really want this? I warn you, there’ll not be much sleep tonight once we get started.”
“I want to know,” Naomi said softly. “I want to know what you did to those others that you did not do with me. I want it all. You are mine, and I want everything you have to give.”
He bent over her, her wrist in his firm grasp held above her head on the pillow. “And you will get it. So you will. But for now, my sweet bird, you are going to return to your own bed, and we won’t spoil what we have been saving for so long. We will bear these last few hours, and then, on our wedding night, we will love until the sun rises. I’ve truly come into the mood of the thing, and I can see myself already, dancing with you in your bridal gown, and thinking of nothing else but how fast I can get it off you once we’re alone.”
He could see that she was nearly trembling with desire. “Go back to your bed, love. We would regret it, I know, even if it would be wonderful for the moment. I want nothing more than to hold you now. God, you are so desirable and beautiful. But really, I think I like the ‘no sex before marriage’ idea.” And, as an afterthought: “And I really, really dig the ‘sex right after marriage’ idea.”
She left him as silently and softly as she had come, and he watched her walk across the room. It was all he could do not to go after her and stop her, put her down on that rosewood table and give them both the pleasure they craved. But the door closed quietly behind her, and he was left once more in his solitude his concentration for reading gone.
“And the Master,” Sal asked over breakfast the morning of the wedding day, “how is he? Nervous, excited, frightened?”
Art laughed his sharp laugh and shook his head.
“None of the above,” was Art’s reply. He had walked into the studio to find Jon singing to himself while he gathered his clothes, freshly showered, his hair still dripping, a towel wrapped around his hips, and Art had admired his well-muscled body. He looked like a panther, a smooth, large, wild cat, barely contained by his surroundings, a beast that needed the open space of the stage to expand and show its true nature. Briefly he wondered about the sex, and how a girl would fare when he let his restraints go. When Jon dropped his towel to get dressed—Art thought enviously that some people really did have it all—talent, fame, wealth, the perfect woman, good looks, and an impres
sive physique to top it all off.
“Definitely not nervous,” he told Sal. “He seemed content with life and how the day is going so far. Relaxed and satisfied to have gotten his way once again, I would say.”
“Yeah,” Sal sighed, “But then he always does, the headstrong, lucky bastard.”
“He’s getting married, Sal, can you imagine? I can hardly wrap my mind around that.” Art reached for another muffin after casting a furtive glance to see if Sue was around. “Jon. The Jonman can’t wait to get freaking married. God, I wonder how many girls would cry their eyes out today if they knew.”
Sal crumbled his croissant without eating it. “Look at who he’s marrying, Art. I’m not surprised at all.”
Art shot him a critical look, but Sal grinned. “And you know the beauty of it? If we had arranged a marriage for him to boost his image, we could not have chosen a better setting or wife. It’s handmade for the tabloids! Long lost love, sweet girl, powerful lyrics writer, and then what? A Canadian society lady with a family as wealthy as the Rockefellers. It’s too good to be true. Something like this could only happen to the Jonman. That guy has luck stuck to him like dog-shit sticks to shoes.”
Just then Jon stepped out of the elevator, dressed and groomed, Joshua beside him, a duplicate of his father in elegance and style.
“Good grief, sometimes it’s nearly too much to bear.” Art sighed and rose to meet his boss.
Sal had often envisioned a scenario where Jon would settle on one of his many lovers and decide to get married, but there had never been one even remotely like what he was witnessing now. They gathered in the lobby, the men who had joined Jon for this day, and began their walk up the narrow cobbled street to the small white church perched on the side of the hill above the small town. Many of the shop owners and townspeople stopped to applaud or greet them in the mellow sunshine of the fine September day.
The Distant Shore (Stone Trilogy) Page 23