"I'll be by for you about eight thirty tomorrow, Keri. You'll need a good night's sleep to be ready to tackle all those moon rocks and space capsules. And I'll need a good night's sleep to be able to keep up with you while you do it!" He pulled her into a hard embrace. "Sleep soft tonight, my darling, and dream of me." He kissed her thoroughly, handed back the key to her front door and added quietly, "I love you, beautiful Keri. Remember that tonight in your dreams."
She smiled mistily up at him. "I love you too, Dain. Come at eight and I'll feed you breakfast."
"Done," he accepted with alacrity and went out, closing the door behind him. Keri gazed unseeingly at the blank surface for a long time, a beatific smile curving her mouth. She loved. She was loved. No shadow of betrayal dimmed the fresh luminosity of this newly acknowledged love.
Chapter Eight
Keri was up early the next morning. If Dain's appetite to date for her cooking was anything to go by, she'd better fix a farmhand's breakfast. She decided on huevos rancheros, hickory-smoked sausage rounds, and hot apple- bran muffins.
When the doorbell rang at precisely eight o'clock, the apartment was fragrant with the mingled odors. Keri met Dain at the door with a hot kiss and the promise of an even hotter cup of coffee, and her heart turned over with love as she saw the smile in his eyes. He looked fresh and well rested, much as Keri herself felt.
She had slept soundly during the night, going to bed with a smile on her mouth and waking with it still in place. She had showered and dressed carefully, but with speed, in comfortable slacks, a scallop-necked knitted top, and low-heeled walking shoes she looked fresh and curvy and the happiness that bubbled and frothed to fill her whole skin gave her an unmistaken glow.
Dain eyed her with evident appreciation. After the first kiss he began to nibble lightly on her throat while his hands pressed her closer to his hard body. "You are delicious, my darling Keri," he murmured.
"Hungry again, Dain! All you think about is food, I do believe," she gurgled softly. Her own lips were busy somewhere in the region beneath his left ear. The faint tang of his aftershave mingled with the warm male smell of his skin was leading Keri to do a little nibbling of her own.
They might never have gotten around to breakfast if the buzzer of the oven timer hadn't gone off to announce that the muffins were done. As Keri pulled reluctantly away from Dain, he announced bitterly, "First phone bells and now even your oven timer is in league against me! Your apartment is going to give me a persecution complex. The sooner I get you out of here, the better."
He had followed her into the close confines of her kitchen as he spoke and she grinned at him while she lifted the hot tins from the oven. She upended them, one at a time, over an insulated wicker basket and the muffins dropped smartly out. Dain lifted one from the basket, juggling it deftly until it cooled enough for him to take an appreciative bite.
"And speaking of getting you out of here," he continued while she served his plate at the table, "when can we get married? Next weekend? Can your relatives gather that fast? You don't want a ten-bridesmaid wedding, do you?" he asked with unconcealed trepidation. "I love you enough to endure a morning coat, but I hope you love me enough not to ask it of me."
The hopeful, questioning inflection in his voice nearly convulsed her. "Could we compromise on eight?" She teased him and laughed delightedly at his expression. He chewed glumly on his eggs and she decided to put him out of his misery. "I don't know exactly how soon Mom and Dad and my brothers can get here. I'll have to call them, but I don't need even a one-bridesmaid wedding. All I need is you," she reassured him.
He heaved an ostentatious sigh of relief and reached into the pocket of his slacks. "For that correct answer, milady receives a prize." He casually unwrapped a twist of soft fabric and lifted out a beautiful, glittering diamond solitaire ring. Keri's mouth rounded in an O of delight and disbelief.
Dain tenderly lifted her left hand and slid the ring, with its fiery marquise-cut diamond, carefully down her finger. When it fit with a snug exactness, he kissed the knuckle of that finger and said with satisfaction, "And that's to come off only to slide a wedding band beneath it, and that just as soon as possible. You're mine only now, Keri, and this is my mark, my KEEP OFF sign."
There was a strongly possessive note in his voice which surprised Keri. Somehow she had the feeling that Dain was speaking more than just generally. She had not considered that Dain might be an abnormally possessive man. His reputation had certainly given no hint of such a facet to his character, but then she had a feeling that she and Dain would both be exploring uncharted territory. She'd certainly never been in love before and she doubted that Dain had either. If her own emotions were anything to judge by, she could comprehend feeling possessive. She personally was prepared to scratch the eyes out of any woman who so much as looked cross-eyed at Dain!
The glass, steel, and stone Air and Space Museum was impressive, as were the exhibits contained therein. Keri did indeed see moon rocks and space capsules as well as flying machines of an earlier era. She wandered entranced from exhibit to exhibit, listening attentively to each recorded explanation. Dain bought her a guidebook at the museum bookstore and she paged through it periodically, whenever she wanted fuller information or was trying to decide what they should see next.
Dain kept her hand firmly clasped in his own, but otherwise was content to let her wander where she wanted. He was aware of the many admiring glances Keri garnered, but they didn't seem to ruffle his composure, especially since Keri was sublimely unaware of any man save himself. The sparkling ring on her left hand and his proprietorial air were sufficient look-but-don't-touch signs.
By three o'clock Keri was tired of things mechanical. She smiled appealingly at Dain and said, "Could we go to the National Gallery for a little while? I'd very much like to visit the French galleries. There are some marvelous Impressionist paintings that I'd love to see again. My favorite ones are by Monet, of the Rouen cathedral at different times of day. The colors and changed light fascinate me. I could stand looking at the National Gallery's Rouen canvases for hours."
"Well, we don't have hours before closing time, but I imagine that there's time for you to at least renew acquaintance with the Monets. I gather that the National Gallery was one of your haunts in your younger museum days?"
"Oh, yes," she admitted readily. Then she added in tones of awe, "Do you know that the Gallery has a Da Vinci?" Her forehead wrinkled endearingly as she tried to express her thoughts clearly. "I think, over and above the artistic significance of the paintings, whether by Old Masters or not, they form, for me at least, a ... a link between people long dead, touching me across space and time as nothing else can. The artist painted in his time and I see in mine and we are joined in a visual experience. The artist actually touched and made that painting. An author spins out the words, but the books themselves are once removed from the physical touch of the creator. For me a painting is a physical experience as well as an intellectual one.
"I felt that same link through time when I was in England. When I walked in the cathedrals, and even more so in the small Norman churches, I felt a kinship, a sure knowledge that others of my kind had walked as I did on those slabs, had touched the rough and dressed stone walls. We could have been walking side by side but separated by five hundred, a thousand years, those people and I. Does that sound too fanciful to you, Dain?" She looked seriously up into the thoughtful green eyes.
"No," he said slowly. "Not fanciful. Thought-provoking, perhaps, and perhaps a bit uncomfortable, but your ghosts must have been friendly ones."
"Oh, not ghosts," she disagreed. "Real people. I knew they were there even though I could neither see nor hear them." She shrugged and quoted Shelley's "Ode to Naples."
I stood within the City disinterred;
And heard the autumnal leaves like footfalls
Of spirits passing through the streets ...
"A tenuous awareness," Keri went on, "but neither friendly nor unfriend
ly. Just a link- in the mind."
Dain took Keri to the National Gallery, as requested, and watched her lose herself in contemplation of the Monets. While she was absorbed, oblivious to his presence, he contemplated her. He suspected that she had a unique way of looking at life and he wanted badly to understand her thought processes. Thought-provoking indeed.
She was still pensively quiet as they crossed back over the Potomac River into Virginia. She didn't question their destination, still immersed as she was in the slightly melancholy mood engendered by her mental meandering into the past.
Dam's apartment in Arlington was large and luxurious. Keri's apartment would have fit into it three times over. The carpets were thick and plush. Keri promptly took off her shoes and socks and wiggled her toes deep into the pile.
"Ah ... My arches thank you," she groaned. She looked around the living room with interest. There were deep suede cloth couches and chairs, comfortable but not impossible to get out of. Heavily textured fabric hung in floor-to-ceiling drapes and warmly oiled wood blended well with the earth-tone color scheme. Elegance and comfort were judiciously combined in a thoroughly masculine apartment.
Keri stretched out on the couch, much as Dain had at her apartment, and waved a hand lazily. "Don't mind me. I'll just inspect your ceiling while you whip up something tasty in the kitchen."
He gave a short crack of laughter. "If I tried to whip up something in the kitchen, I can pretty well guarantee that it wouldn't be all that tasty. Ham sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly, or scrambled eggs are about my speed."
"Do you mean that you brought me here to starve?" she wailed in mock indignation. "Or am I to rummage in your bachelor refrigerator and magically produce a six-course meal from a nub of cheddar cheese and the old rinds of bacon?"
"Fortunately we're both saved from that fate," he retorted. "My housekeeper had instructions to leave a meal ready for us. All we have to do is punch the appropriate buttons on the microwave and carry in the other food from the refrigerator. That is well within my capabilities," he announced with pride.
"My, my. How domesticated you are. I would never have suspected it," she enthused admiringly.
"Woman," he growled threateningly, "I am dangerous when I'm hungry. Get up and feed me."
Keri must not have been overly impressed because she didn't scramble up immediately and race into the kitchen. She got in one final word. "The way to your heart must be a superhighway, darling. You're always hungry. I thought love was supposed to make you pine and lose your appetite."
He leered at her and advanced toward the couch. "You, my proud beauty, give me appetites I didn't know I had!"
At those words Keri was off the couch in a flash, but she wasn't scuttling toward the kitchen. Instead she threw herself directly into Dain's arms. He lifted her and swung her exultantly around in a circle. When she came back to earth, they both went into the kitchen to see what Dain's Mrs. Babcock had left for them.
After a delicious meal Keri loaded the dishwasher. Dain protested, telling her to leave them for Mrs. Babcock, but Keri had elicited the information that the inestimable housekeeper didn't work on Sunday. Dain might be prepared to let the dishes sit in the sink until Monday morning, but Keri wasn't. She came to a clean kitchen. She'd leave one behind.
The apartment didn't have an open fireplace, but soft lights and even softer music set the mood well enough.
Keri curled up against Dain on the big comfortable couch, her glass of Amaretto and soda held lightly in her hand. Dain was sipping on a brandy, his feet propped on the wood and slate coffee table.
They talked about nothing in particular, pausing to listen whenever a snatch of music caught their attention. It seemed merely a natural extension of the peaceful rapport when Dain gently lifted Keri's half empty glass from her lax fingers and placed it beside his own on a side table.
He gathered her against himself and began to kiss her in a leisurely fashion, not aggressively, but quietly leading her into a mutual exploration of the sensory pleasures. She shared the taste of brandy from his breath and their tongues met and stroked in the soft duel for dominance which she gladly lost.
His hands were gentle but firm, sweeping down over her shoulders and back, to glide beneath her knitted top seeking the warm, smooth skin. The top was in the way, Keri thought lazily, and she never considered objecting when Dain lifted it over her head. He dealt with the front closure of her bra impatiently, fumbling only momentarily until he had mastered the mystery of the pressure needed to release the slide fastening.
He made a sound deep from the back of his throat and his hands came up to gently cup the rich flesh thus exposed to his pleasure. His fingers had a life of their own as they stroked and gently kneaded the firm curves, while his mouth nibbled and nipped its way from her lips, down the arch of her throat and onto the swollen mound his fingers lifted.
Keri was nearly frenzied from the sensations Dain caused. Her own hands were busy exploring the muscular roughness of his chest beneath his shirt. His body gave off heat like a furnace, burning against her flattened palms and stroking fingers wherever they touched the skin beneath the silky fur on his chest.
A shock, almost like a dart of pain, but without the sharp overtones, shot through Keri's body, radiating from the nipple Dain had captured in his lips. She felt his tongue rolling over and around the tip, felt the nipple swell into throbbing hardness. She couldn't suppress the low moan that rippled in the back of her throat, and when he began to suckle gently, drawing pleasure, giving pleasure such as she had never experienced, she whimpered.
"Honey, sweet honey," he murmured into the valley between the soft hills of her breasts. He lifted his head away from her enticing skin and pulled his own shirt off in one swift motion before he took her back in his arms and whispered, "I want you now, Keri. I want to taste and touch and know every inch of your lovely body. I want to place the seal of my body on yours as well as my ring on your finger. I need to know that you're mine alone now. I love you, Keri. Come to me."
The words were interspersed between drugging kisses and caresses, but Keri heard every word. He only put into audible words what Keri's body demanded of her. She pulled his head up to meet her avid mouth, giving him the answer he sought by the fervor of her kiss.
He said no more. He lifted her in his arms and carried her steadily out of the living room, through a dimly lit hall, and into his bedroom. With one hand he swept back the spread and upper sheet before lowering her onto the waiting bed. He gently removed the rest of her clothes before removing his own.
The kisses and caresses he had given her before were exciting, but now that he had the freedom of her body, he quickly enticed her onto a slow spiral upward to ecstasy. His mouth was fiery and as he sipped and feasted on the peaks of her breasts, she began to moan and writhe, pleading wordlessly for the final holocaust which would quench the flames racing through her body, in one final, splendorous immolation.
Dain worshiped her body with his mouth and hands, and when he covered her, spreading her thighs gently with his hands to take what was his alone, she clung to him desperately, her hands splayed over the bunched muscles of his back, digging in for purchase as he lifted her into his possession.
She muffled her cry against the smooth swell of his shoulder as the short, sharp pain ripped through her, and she felt him falter, hesitate. ... She began to kiss his neck and throat and it was too late for his questions, too late for anything but the needs of their bodies.
When he could speak again, Dain lifted himself up on one elbow and switched on a shaded light. He turned back and looked down at Keri as she lay curled against his side. He gently brushed a rich tendril of hair back from her face, smoothing down the soft line of her cheek. Her eyes opened slowly, the pupils still dark and unfocused in the aftermath of her experience. She smiled, slowly, lovingly.
"My God, Keri," he said harshly. "You were a virgin." He sounded appalled.
Her smile deepened. "Yes, I was," she purre
d, her voice throaty with satisfaction. She stretched and ran a hand lovingly through the hair on his chest.
He shot up in bed as though she had sunk claws into his skin. "Damn it, Keri, don't you understand? You were a virgin!"
"I know that, Dain. I always knew it," Keri said patiently. "What I don't understand is why it upsets you. I thought you'd be glad.
"Of course I'm glad," he nearly shouted. "I ... I just didn't expect ..." Concern darkened his face. "Did I . . . hurt you, sweetheart? I would have been gentler if I'd suspected, if I'd known . . ." He was floundering badly.
Keri was amused. The assured, sophisticated Dain Randolph at such a loss. She touched his face, his mouth, gently with her fingertips. "I love you, darling. You made me very happy. Are you sorry now?" she said softly.
"Sorry? God, no!" He gathered her into his arms fiercely. "I wanted you. I want you now. It's just that... well," he said awkwardly, "perhaps you would rather have waited until after we were married."
"Do you think we could have waited?" she asked wryly, her mouth curving into a wicked, woman-wise smile.
"No..." he groaned and began to kiss her desperately, hungrily, confirming his possession of her body again.
The next morning Keri wandered into the kitchen, wrapped in a short terrycloth robe of Dain's, to investigate the possibilities for breakfast. They had showered together, an exhilarating experience for Keri at least, and she had left Dain in the steamy bathroom trying to clear the mist from the mirror so that he could shave. She felt pleasantly domestic and just a bit stiff and sore as well They hadn't slept much, but for a wedding night, as Keri considered it, it hadn't been bad at all. She stretched sinuously and the robe fell open . . . not bad at all!
She tied the robe again and started the coffee perking. She was very glad that she'd done the dishes the night before. How depressing to wake up to a sinkful of crusted plates after such a night.
Deceptive Love Page 14