He snorted. “You’d probably give the rest away, now that you’ve got your precious books and your tapes and your wok—”
“Damn it, Garrick!” she cried, sliding forward on the sofa. “Why are you doing this to me? I don’t tell you how to live, do I? If my books mean more to me than clothes, that’s my choice.” Tears sparkled on her lids but she refused to let them fall. “I may not be like other women in that sense, but it’s the way I am. Will it really hurt you if I alternate between two outfits? If I’m clean and I don’t smell, why should you be concerned? Am I that awful to look at that I need all kinds of fancy things to make my presence bearable?”
She was on her feet, looking at him with hurt-filled eyes. “You don’t want me here. I know that, and because of it, I don’t want to be here, either. I never asked to be marooned with you. If I’d known what Victoria was planning, I’d never have left New York!” She was breathing hard, trying to control her temper, but without success. “I’m as independent as you are, and I prize that independence. I’ve earned it. Do you think it’s easy for me to be stuck in an isolated cabin with a sharp-tongued, self-indulgent recluse? Well, it isn’t! I took enough abuse from my husband. I don’t have to take it from you!”
She started to move away, but turned back as quickly. “And since we’ve taken off the gloves, let me tell you something else. You have the manners of a boor! I didn’t have to cook dinner tonight. You’ve made it clear that you’re more than happy doing it. But I wanted to do something for you, for a change. I wanted to please you. I wanted to show you that I’m not a wimpy female who needs to be waited on. And what did I get for it? Out-and-out rudeness. You took your sweet time deciding whether you’d privilege me with your company at the table. Then after you shoveled food in your mouth, you stormed off as though I’d committed some unpardonable sin. What did I do? Can’t you at least tell me that? Or is it beyond your capability to share your thoughts once in a while?”
Through her entire tirade, he didn’t move a muscle. Throwing her hands up in a gesture of futility, she turned away. Yanking a nightshirt from the duffel she’d stowed under the bed, she fled to the bathroom. A minute later she was out again, throwing her clothes down on top of the duffel, plopping down on the edge of the bed.
Her breath was ragged and her fingers dug into the quilt with fearsome strength. She was angry. She was hurt. But mostly she was dismayed, because she’d taken both her anger and her hurt out on Garrick. It wasn’t like her to do that to anyone. She was normally the most composed of women. Yet she’d disintegrated before Garrick. Garrick. After last night.
She didn’t see or hear him until he was standing directly before her. Her eyes focused on his legs. She couldn’t look up. She didn’t know what to say.
Very slowly, he lowered himself to his haunches. She bowed her head even more, but he raised it with a finger beneath her chin. A gentle finger. Her gaze crept upward.
His eyes held the words of apology that his lips wouldn’t form, and that gentle finger became five, touching her cheek with soulful hesitance. Callused fingertips moved falteringly, exploring her cheek, her cheekbone, the straight slope of her nose, her lips.
Her breath caught in her throat, because all the while he was touching her, his eyes were speaking, and the words were so sad and humble and heartfelt that she wanted to cry.
He leaned forward, then hesitated.
She touched her fingertips to the thick brush of his beard in encouragement.
This time when he leaned forward he didn’t falter, and the words he spoke so silently were the most meaningful of all.
5
GARRICK KISSED HER. It was the first time their lips had touched, and it wasn’t so much the touching itself as its manner that shook Leah to the core. His mouth was artful, capturing hers with a gentleness that spoke of caring, a sweetness that spoke of a deep inner need. He brushed his lips back and forth across her softening flesh, then drew back to look at her again.
His eyes caressed each of her features. Setting her glasses aside, he kissed her eyes, the bridge of her nose, her cheekbone, her temple. By the time he returned to her mouth, her lips were parted. She tipped her head to perfect the fit, welcoming him with rapidly flaring desire.
His enthusiasm matched hers. Oh, he’d fought it. All day and all evening he’d been telling himself that he didn’t want this or need it, that it would cause more trouble than it was worth. He’d been telling himself that he had the self-control to resist any and all urgings of the flesh. But then Leah had blown up. She’d given him a piece of her mind, and she’d been right in what she’d said. He’d seen and felt her hurt, and he’d known that urgings of the flesh were but a small part of the attraction he felt for her.
He couldn’t fight it any longer, because just as his new life was built on control, it was built on honesty. What he felt for Leah, what he needed from her and with her was too raw, too beautiful to be sullied by ugly behavior or lack of communication. He’d talk. He’d tell her about himself. For now, though, he needed to speak with his body.
Calling on everything he’d ever learned about pleasing a woman, he set to pleasing Leah. His mouth was never still, never rough or forceful, demanding only in the most subtle of ways. He stroked her lips, loved them with his own and with his tongue, worshiped the small teeth that lay behind, then the deeper, warmer, moister recesses that beckoned.
There was nothing calculated in what he did. He might have learned and perfected the technique from and on other women, but what he felt as he pleasured Leah came straight from the heart. And he was pleasuring himself, as well, discovering a goodness he’d never known, realizing yet again that what he’d once thought of as purely physical was emotionally uplifting with Leah. In that sense, he was experiencing a rebirth. His past took on meaning, for it was the groundwork from which he could love Leah completely.
She felt it. She felt the wealth of feeling behind the mouth that revered hers, the tongue that flowed around and against hers, the hands that sifted through her hair with such tenderness. She felt things new and different, things that arrowed into her heart and made her tremble.
“Garrick?” she breathed when his lips left hers for a minute.
“Shhhhh—”
“I’m sorry for yelling—”
He was cupping her head, his breath whispering over her. “We’ll talk later. I need you too much now.” He kissed her once more, lingeringly, then released her to whip his sweatshirt over his head.
Her hands were on him even before the sweatshirt hit the floor. Palms open, fingers splayed, she ran her hands over his chest, covering every inch in greedy possession. He was warm and firm. A fine mat of hair, its tawny hue made golden by the residual light of the fire, wove a manly pattern over his flesh. She explored the broader patch above his breasts and traced its narrowing to his waist, then dragged her hands upward again until they spanned dual swells of muscle and small, tight nipples rasped against her palms.
The breath he expelled was a shuddering one. He had his eyes closed and his head thrown back. His long fingers closed around her wrists, not to stop her voyage but simply because he needed to hold her, to know that he wasn’t imagining her touch. His insides were hot; shafts of fire were shooting toward his loins, and a sheen of perspiration had broken out on his skin, adding to the sensual slide of her hands.
When she rounded his shoulders and began to stroke his back in those same, broad sweeps of discovery, he shakily released the buttons of her nightshirt and pushed the soft fabric down her arms. For a minute he could do nothing but look; the perfection before him all but stopped his breathing. Her breasts were round and full, their tips gilded by the firelight. He touched one. Her nipple was already hard, but grew even more so. Sucking in a breath at the sweet pain, Leah closed her fingers on the smooth flesh at his sides and clung for dear life.
His eyes locked with hers, finding a desire there that was echoed in the shallowness of her breathing. “I want to touch you, Leah.
I need to. I need to touch and to taste.”
She gave a convulsive swallow, then whispered, “Please!”
Unable to help himself, he smiled. She was so adorable, so sexy, so guileless when it came to this. He had to kiss her again, and he did, and while his lips held hers, he touched her breasts. She jerked at the sudden charge of sensation, but he gentled her with his mouth, and his work-roughened hands circled her, covered her, lifted her with care. She never quite got used to his touch, because each time he moved his palm or a finger, new currents of awareness sizzled through her. When the pads of his thumbs scored her nipples, soft sounds of arousal came from deep in her throat, and when forefingers joined thumbs in an erotic rolling, a snowballing need had her squirming restlessly.
Her hands moved with desperation to the waistband of his cords. His met them there, unsnapping and unzipping, before leaving her to her own devices. He wanted to touch her more, this time her knees, which were widespread, allowing him to kneel between them, then her thighs, which were soft and smooth and quivering. When her hands slipped beneath the band of his shorts in search of the point of greatest heat, his surged higher, similarly seeking and finding the heart of her sex.
Leah’s head fell forward, mouth open, teeth braced on his shoulder. Her hands surrounded him. They measured his length and width, weighed the heaviness beneath. They caressed satin over steel and were rewarded when he strained harder against her palms. But her mind was only half there, because Garrick had opened her and begun to do such intimately arousing things to her that she could barely breathe, much less think.
She’d never thought of herself as lacking control where sex was concerned, but she’d never been half as hot as she was now. She felt herself floating, rising, and her attempts to rein in were futile. Sandwiching the power of his virility between them, her hands went still.
“Garrick … oh … oh.” She sucked in a breath, let it out in a tremulous whisper. “Please … I need … wait.”
But just then he took her nipple into his mouth, and it was too late. The brush of his mustache and beard and his gentle sucking snapped the fine thread from which she’d been hanging. Her thighs closed on his hands as her insides exploded, and she could only gasp against his shoulder while she rode out a storm of endless spasms. When they subsided at last, she rolled her face to the crook of his neck.
“I’m sorry … I couldn’t hold back…”
Framing her face, he raised it and kissed her. His lips shifted and angled and sucked, never once leaving hers as he bore her gently back on the bed. His hands tugged the nightshirt from her hips, then went to work baring himself. Naked, he lowered his large frame over her.
Leah was ready to take him in, but he had no intention of simply slaking his desire while she lay quiescent and sated. He wanted her hungry again. He wanted her aroused and aching for him, because he knew that if it was so, his own fulfillment would be all the richer.
So he began to touch her anew. Her breasts, her belly, that ultrasensitive spot between her legs—he stimulated and teased, using hands, lips and tongue. And he was doing just fine until she became active herself, finding the places that set him to shaking, stroking them, tormenting them with fingers that were innocent and eager to please.
And Garrick was pleased, though the word seemed a paltry one to describe his feelings. He’d never felt so valued—not just needed, valued. Beneath Leah’s hands and lips and the sweet waft of her breath, he felt cherished, special and unique. He felt as though she couldn’t be doing this with any other man but him.
At that moment, he knew the future would have to take care of itself. He needed her now and for however long she chose to stay with him. If, at the end of that time, he was alone, he knew that he’d have experienced something most men never even approach. He’d have memories of something rare and wonderful, and he’d be a stronger man for it.
Writhing gently beneath him, Leah urged him to her. He grasped her hands, intertwined his fingers with hers and pinned them to the quilt by her shoulders. Poised above her, he watched her face as slowly, slowly he entered her.
Her eyes fell shut and a tiny smile of bliss curved her lips. Then, with a sigh, she lifted her legs and wrapped them tightly around him. “Don’t move,” she whispered, still smiling in that catlike way that gave him a thrill. “You feel … I feel so … good … full.”
“Leah?” he whispered.
Slowly her eyes opened. They were filled with the same love that filled his heart. He knew it was absurd. He and Leah had known each other for only two days, and those under unusual conditions. They hadn’t talked much, hadn’t shared thoughts of the past or the future, much less the present, but he did love her. He’d never felt anything like it before—the driving desire to please a woman, to make her happy in the broadest sense—but he felt that way toward Leah. He felt that he’d willingly sacrifice his quiet to hear her music, his steak and potatoes to eat her Chinese food, his normal efficiency to take her floundering in the mud. He knew that if she asked him to withdraw from her just then, he’d forgo a climax and still feel complete.
She didn’t ask him anything of the sort, though. Rather, she began to move her hips and her inner muscles, holding him ever more tightly, taking his breath away. Lifting her head from the pillow, she sought his lips, and he lost track of everything but the intense pleasure of stroking her tongue and drawing it into his mouth. Bowing his back, he withdrew, then thrust forward, withdrew, then thrust forward. With each thrust he went deeper. With each withdrawal, he returned hotter. Finally, with a surge that touched her womb, he stiffened and held, erupting into a release so powerful that he thought he’d die, so glorious that he would have welcomed it.
Only when awareness returned did he realize that Leah, too, was vibrating in the aftermath of climax. Her cheek was pressed to their intertwined hands. Her eyes were shut tightly. Her lips were parted to allow for the soft panting that was sweet music to his ears. He was glad then that he hadn’t died, for there was more to come, so much more.
Very gently he slid from her, but before she could protest, he’d nestled her snugly into the crook of his shoulder. One of his arms encircled her back, the other grasped her thigh and drew it over his. His fingers remained in a warm clasp around her knee.
Eyes closed, Leah sighed in contentment. She rubbed her nose against Garrick’s chest, inhaling the scent of man and musk and sex that would have been arousing had not she been so thoroughly sated.
“Ahhh, Garrick,” she whispered. “So nice…”
“It is, isn’t it?” he responded as softly. In the past he would have been reaching for a cigarette. Putting distance between himself and the body next to him. Biding the few obligatory minutes before he could clear whatever woman he was with from his bed. Now, though, the only thing he wanted to do was lie holding Leah. And talk.
“You’re spectacular,” she said. “Maybe I should yell at you more.”
That drew a lazy chuckle from his throat. “Maybe you should. It brings me to my senses.”
“I’m not usually the yelling type.”
“I’m not usually the brooding type.”
“What brought it on?”
He cuffed his chin against the top of her head, knowing that his beard would cushion the gentle blow. “You.”
“Is it that difficult having me here?”
“Just the opposite. I like having you here.”
“Then why—”
“I like it too much. I thought I had my life all worked out. Then you pop in and upset the apple cart.”
“Oh.” She took a quick breath. “I know what you mean.”
“You do?”
“Mmm. I haven’t minded living alone—living without a man. I thought it was the safest thing.”
“Did your marriage hurt you that much?”
“Yes.”
“You said he abused you. Was it physical?”
“He never beat me. It was more an emotional thing.”
“Tell
me about him. What was he like?”
Leah thought for a minute, seeking to express her feelings with a minimum of bitterness. “He was good-looking and charming. He could sell an icebox to an Eskimo.”
“He was a salesman?”
“Indirectly. He was—is—a top executive in an ad agency. If you want to know what charisma is, you don’t have to look farther than Richard. People flock to him. He attracts clients like flies. Lord only knows why he married me.”
Garrick gave her a sharp squeeze, but she went on.
“I’m serious. I guess it was the stage he was at when we met. He was just getting started. He needed a wife who looked relatively sophisticated, and when I try, I suppose I do look that. He needed someone who knew the ins and outs of New York, and since I’d lived there all my life, I guess I qualified on that score, too. He needed someone he could manipulate, and I fit the bill.”
“You don’t strike me as being terribly manipulatable,” Garrick said with feeling.
She laughed. “How can you say that after what Victoria did?”
“That may be the one exception, and since we were both patsies, we won’t count it.”
“Well, Richard was able to manipulate me. I wanted to please him. I wanted to make the marriage work.”
“Why didn’t it?”
“Oh, lots of reasons. Mainly because I couldn’t be what Richard wanted.”
“Couldn’t?”
“That, and wouldn’t. I got tired of being told when to be where wearing what. I got tired of feeling that regardless how hard I tried, I didn’t measure up.”
“What did the guy want?” Garrick barked. The sound reverberated in his chest beneath Leah’s ear. Knowing that he was on her side, she didn’t mind his anger.
“Perfection.”
Crossed Hearts (Matchmaker Trilogy) Page 10