by JoAnn Ross
So they just stood that way while the rain pattered over their heads and the room darkened and all the dreams Joanna hadn’t realized she still cherished drained away into hopeless reality.
All the pretending in the world wasn’t going to change the fact that she truly didn’t know Teague Darby anymore. The man she’d married, the man she’d loved so fiercely for so long wouldn’t have dreamed of selling this cottage. For all their success, they’d always agreed that, if everything suddenly went to hell in the proverbial handbasket, they could sell the business and the mansion, empty their bank accounts, and liquidate all their investments—but the cottage, the cottage was sacred ground.
A sob tore itself out of Joanna’s throat.
Teague pulled her close again and held her tightly. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, Joanna,” he said. “Honest to God, I didn’t. I just wasn’t thinking straight. I—ever since we started planning this divorce—”
She drew back, though his arms were still around her, and looked up into his taut, drawn face. He needed a shave, and there were deep shadows under his eyes.
“Who are you, Teague?” she whispered. “Who are you?”
“Joanna, I’m sorry—”
She shook her head and pulled back, and this time, he let her go.
“I don’t want to talk to you right now,” she said. “I don’t want to look at you. I’m—I’m going out for a walk.”
“Are you out of your mind? It’s raining!”
She tried to smile but fell short. “A little rain never hurt anybody.” It was standard Seattle vernacular. Most of the natives didn’t even carry umbrellas; they simply expected to get wet and eventually dry off.
“Will you listen to me? It’s cold, and the wind is rising, and—”
Joanna moved past him, into the living room, and opened the front door.
“At least wear a coat!” Teague said.
Sammy came to her and nuzzled at the knees of her too-tight jeans.
Joanna stepped outside like a sleepwalker, shutting the door behind her. She heard Sammy whimper and scratch on the other side, but she didn’t turn back. She ran over the rain-slickened grass through the downpour. She ran until her hair was dripping and her clothes were soaked. She ran until she was breathless, knowing all the while that she was behaving like an idiot, and completely unable to do anything else but run.
She was well down the road when her stamina finally gave out and she had to stop, bent double, gasping, shrieking silently with a grief as profound as if everyone she loved had suddenly died.
And then Teague was there, as wet as she was, wrapping a yellow rain slicker around her, raising the hood to cover her head.
“I hate you!” she screamed. “Teague Darby, I hate you for turning into somebody else when I wasn’t looking!”
Teague stared down at her for a few moments, oblivious to the rain, unspeaking. Then he lifted her into his arms, turned, and started back toward the cottage.
Inside, he kicked the door shut with one foot, but he didn’t set her down. He carried her through the house, both of them dripping, Sammy following fretfully behind.
In the bathroom, Teague set Joanna down hard on the lid of the toilet seat and started hot water running in the huge claw-foot tub they’d bought at an estate sale and had refurbished.
“What are you doing?” Joanna asked before sneezing.
Teague crouched in front of her, and pulled off her wet shoes, peeled away her socks. “Trying to keep you from catching pneumonia,” he said, “and I’d appreciate a little cooperation!” He stood and stepped back. “Get naked, get in the tub, and soak until you feel warm. I’m heading for the kitchen.”
Joanna sniffled. She felt like a first-class fool, sitting there on a toilet, soaked to the skin. What had she been thinking, running in the rain like that?
But that was just it. She hadn’t been thinking. She’d been feeling, and it had hurt too much. She’d tried to outrun the pain, foolishly, desperately. And it was still with her.
Better get used to it, she thought. This is your life, Joanna Darby. From now on.
Teague was gone before she got around to wondering what he intended to do in the kitchen. She undressed and stepped into the steaming tub, wincing at the heat of the water, welcome as it was.
Maybe, she reflected with grim amusement, sinking to her chin, she ought to drown herself.
Teague returned a few minutes later, carrying a cup of something hot. “Drink this,” he said, shoving it at her.
It was a hot toddy, stout on the brandy side.
Joanna sipped.
Teague plopped down on the toilet-seat lid. He was soaked and shivering a little, but he appeared not to have noticed.
“That was a stupid trick,” he said.
“Thank you for that insight,” Joanna replied thickly. Oh, great. Her sinuses were already clogging up.
The lights flickered, went out, and came on again, but tentatively.
“You’d better get into this tub while we still have hot water,” Joanna said. She’d always been the practical one.
The bathroom door was open a crack, and Sammy stuck his snout in, whining.
“At least he’s dry,” Teague said, stripping.
Sammy retreated, padding off down the hall again.
Joanna sat up a little straighter, pulling her legs back and crossing them so Teague could fit in the other end of the tub, facing her. His lips were blue, and his teeth were chattering slightly.
Joanna extended the cup to him, and he took a sip, but grudgingly.
“Why didn’t you make one for yourself?” she asked.
“Somebody has to stay sober around here,” he grumbled. “Not to mention sane.”
She giggled, and the sound was a congested snort.
“I don’t want to sell this cottage,” she said, lifting the mug in a sort of defiant toast.
“Yes,” Teague said, “I gathered that.”
“The water’s getting cold,” Joanna remarked thickly. “Turn the spigot marked H, please.”
“Thanks for the highly technical instructions,” Teague said, but he turned, his fine butt making a scooching sound on the bottom of the big tub, and hot water flowed. “Does it bother you that my ass is getting scalded?” he inquired.
“Not at all,” Joanna said.
Grumbling, he shifted so he was sitting with his back to Joanna. He slid back against her and she had to straighten her legs to keep her kneecaps from snapping.
“You’re squashing me,” she complained.
“Too bad. I’m not going to parboil my butt by turning around.”
Joanna laughed. “How much brandy did you put in this toddy?” she asked.
“Enough,” Teague answered with a sigh.
She set the cup on the wide brim of the tub, where they used to burn candles, back when bathing together meant having aqua-sex. Then, a little drunk, she slid her hands around to the front of his chest and played with his nipples.
He groaned.
She stroked his taut belly.
He sat up a little straighter, the muscles in his back and shoulders hard with tension.
She took hold of his cock.
He gasped. “I think I should—shut off the water—”
“But then I’d have to let go of you,” she said sweetly.
“As much as I hate that idea—your letting go of me, I mean,” Teague choked out, “the tub is going to overflow.”
Reluctantly, she released him.
He shut off the flow of hot water and turned, facing her, kneeling now. He was huge, rigid.
Magnificent.
Joanna sat up. She took Teague into her hands, then into her mouth, savoring him, teasing him with the tip of her tongue.
He clasped the edge of the tub with one hand, burying the other in Joanna’s hair.
And he murmured her name.
She worked him harder.
He groaned again, struggling to hold himself still, to hold himself back
.
Joanna was taking no prisoners. She nipped him lightly, and he tensed and gave a ragged, raspy cry. When she began to suck again, he suddenly grasped her head in both hands and drew out of her mouth.
“Teague?”
“If you keep doing that, I’m going to come.”
She kept doing that.
And he came.
She stayed with him until he stilled, dropped to his haunches in the cooling bathwater, breathing almost as hard as before his orgasm.
He sagged forward onto her, and they lay still in the big tub, Joanna’s hands stroking his shoulders.
In the distance, the telephone began to ring.
“Ignore it,” Teague pleaded.
“It might be Caitlin,” Joanna said. “What if something’s wrong?”
Teague got up, stepped out of the tub, wrapped a towel around his waist, and tossed another towel to Joanna.
By the time she caught up to him in their bedroom, he was just hanging up the phone.
“Is Caitlin all right?” Joanna asked anxiously.
Teague grinned. “As far as I know,” he said. “That was somebody selling vinyl siding. We qualify for the V.I.P. rate. At least, that’s what I think he said. He was calling from Pakistan, so I’m not really sure.”
Joanna stood still in the doorway, barely covered by her towel.
In the living room, Sammy gave a loud snore.
“Come here,” Teague said, his gaze smoldering as he dragged it from her feet to her face.
And before she knew she’d moved, Joanna was standing in front of Teague and he was relieving her of the towel.
Chapter Four
“Sex,” Joanna said sagely, when she recovered her power of speech, “is not the solution to our dilemma.”
Teague, lying beside her in the tangle of bedding, hauled her on top of him and chuckled. “You couldn’t prove it by me,” he said. “Right now, I’m wondering what ‘our dilemma’ is, exactly.”
Outside, the wind howled around the edges of the cottage and rattled the glass in the windows.
Joanna knew she ought to withdraw from him, get out of bed, get dressed, but there was a disconnect between her mind and the corresponding muscles. She’d melted, that was the problem. “We don’t talk when we’re having sex,” she said, idly winding a finger in a strand of Teague’s hair.
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Teague suggested. “Maybe words get in the way of what we’re really trying to say to each other.”
“I don’t see how we can settle anything if we don’t talk,” Joanna replied. “But I’m intrigued by the theory.” She reached under the covers and closed her hand around him, pleased that he was getting hard again.
Teague gave a low moan.
Joanna slipped beneath the covers, kissing her way down Teague’s chest and belly.
But he drew her up before she reached her intended destination. And then, in a rolling motion of his body, he turned both himself and Joanna so that she was on her hands and knees in the middle of the mattress and he was behind her.
Joanna closed her eyes as heat surged through her, and instinctively gripped the rails in the headboard with her fingers.
Teague, already pressing against her, began caressing her breasts, one and then the other, delicately rolling her nipples between his fingers.
Now she was the one moaning.
He teased her with the moist tip of his cock even as he eased her thighs apart.
“Do it,” she whispered.
He bent, kissed her nape, the bones in her spine. “Do what?”
Joanna groaned out a long, needy “Ooh—”
“Do what?” Teague repeated, tracing the lines of her shoulder blades with the tip of his tongue.
“Fuck me,” she said.
“Don’t you want to—talk?”
“Fuck me,” she repeated, grinding against him, shameless in her need.
He found the entrance to her vagina and slammed into her in a low, hard thrust that made her throw back her head and give a guttural cry.
“Harder,” she pleaded. “Oh, Teague—harder—”
He toyed with her clitoris, still inside her, filling her.
She reached the first sharp orgasm, and Teague’s control shattered. He gripped her hips to steady her and fucked her in earnest, hard and fast and deep.
She gloried in the furious friction as he pounded into her, possessing her, ravishing her, like a wild storm that would not be stilled until it had spent itself.
They met in the whirlwind, their bodies fully joined in one final, shuddering collision of consuming fire.
Joanna came repeatedly, softly, all during the deliciously slow descent, Teague still grasping her hips, still moving in and out of her, though more gently now. He knew, damn him, how to extract the last, quivering release from her, how to melt the very marrow of her bones.
She sagged, exhausted, to the mattress.
He rested on top of her, his forearms braced on either side of her shoulders.
A long, long time passed before either of them spoke.
“Joanna,” Teague said, “I don’t think this divorce is working out.”
She giggled, crying at the same time, crushed flat beneath him.
He raised himself, turned her over, and looked deep into her eyes.
She crooned and stretched, limp with satisfaction. “I could sleep for a month,” she murmured.
“If I planned to let you,” Teague said. And he slid down a little to suck idly at her breasts. “Which I don’t.”
“All this sex—it’s—”
“Good,” Teague finished for her, taking her nipple into his warm mouth and drawing upon it until she groaned.
There was no denying that. But then, sex had always been good with Teague. In recent years, though, it had been mechanical—both of them climaxed because they knew each other’s bodies so well, but it was as if a part of them remained untouched. Though satisfying, the whole experience was oddly detached—clean, safe, dignified.
Or, at least, it had been that way—until this weekend.
Normally, Joanna despised the word “fuck”—it was crude. She preferred the term “lovemaking,” because it was more sedate, more acceptable. The intimate version of a handshake.
But this time, in this bed, she hadn’t wanted Teague to make love to her. She’d wanted him to fuck her, full out, no holds barred, and he surely had.
She’d missed that.
She’d missed Teague.
The old Teague. The one who’d come home sometimes, in the middle of the day, while Caitlin was in school and the housekeeper was off on some errand, and had Joanna wherever he happened to find her: bending her over the washing machine, the back of the couch, even the dining-room table. It hadn’t been lovemaking—it had been good old-fashioned fucking, and she’d reveled in it. Reveled in orgasms so intense she shouted and howled and begged.
Tears seeped between her lashes.
Teague raised his head from her breasts, sensing the change in her mood. Kissing the wetness off her cheeks.
“What is it?” he asked hoarsely.
Joanna wrapped her arms around his neck and allowed herself to do something she’d sworn off long ago, for the sake of dignity, because they were grownups, with a child to raise and a business to manage. She clung. “Why can’t it always be like this?” she whispered.
Teague chuckled. “Well, primarily because it would probably kill both of us,” he said. He wriggled against her. “Eventually.”
“Can we just stay here? Not go back to Seattle at all?”
Teague blinked, confused.
“I mean it,” Joanna said. “Why does this have to end?”
He kissed her, with his eyes open and full of puzzlement.
More tears came, tickling Joanna’s temples, rolling into her ears. “Do we have to divide things up and go our separate ways?” she asked. “Do we really have to?”
Teague swallowed hard. “Are you just saying that,”
he asked gruffly, “because you want my body?”
“I’m saying it because I want you, Teague.” She smiled, squirming a little to tease him. “Although your studly body is a definite plus.”
His eyes were wet. “God, Joanna, I love you. I always have. I guess I just forgot how to tell you, how to show you—”
“Shh,” she said, lifting her head to kiss him. “You’re not the only one who forgot. I did, too. Do you think we could try again?”
Teague laughed hoarsely. “That depends. If you’re talking about another session like the one we just had, I need a little time. I’m almost a grandfather, you know. If you’re talking about the marriage, it’s an unequivocal yes.”
“Think we can get it right?”
“I think we’ll make a lot of mistakes, and get it right most of the time.”
“Sounds sensible,” Joanna said softly, stroking the side of his wonderful face with a slow motion of one index finger. “I’d like to suggest one ground rule, though.”
“What’s that?”
“If one of us decides to leave, the other one gets the dog.”
Teague grinned. “Deal,” he said.
And then he kissed her in a very ungrandfatherly way.
One month later
Joanna looked up from her computer, watching through the front window as Teague and Sammy came up from the beach, Sammy as spry as a pup now that he was getting a lot of fresh air, attention, and exercise, Teague relaxed and happy, with sawdust on his jeans. He spent mornings in the garage behind the cottage, working on his boat, while Joanna worked on her novel.
Today, she had a surprise for him.
“Hello, Gramps,” she said as he and Sammy came in, bringing a pleasant summer breeze with them.
Teague crossed to bend and kiss her.
“What do you say I fuck your socks off while Sammy takes his nap?” he asked.
She grinned. “Bend me over something,” she said. “I’m all yours.”
His eyes glowed with anticipation and mischievous plans as he pulled her to her feet.
“But first,” she said, “there’s something I have to tell you.”
He frowned. “Caitlin’s all right?”