He kissed her long and hard, there in the sunlight, in front of whoever cared to watch. When he finally drew back to look at her his expression held every bit of the pleasure she felt. “You look great, Nia,” he gasped, then grinned. “New outfit?”
“You know it is, bub,” she teased back, recalling that he had been with her when she had bought it—and the rest of her current possessions—the Saturday before. This was a particularly pretty ruffled skirt and blouse. With her height and long, slender legs, she wore it well. Additionally, she both looked and felt unusually feminine.
As though he followed her line of thought, he took her hand. “Let’s get your bag. I could use a little more privacy for what I’ve got in mind.”
What he had in mind was a direct trip back to the hotel and an equally straight bee-line to his room. When he had finally shut the door with its “Do Not Disturb” sign on the outer knob, he took her in his arms once more.
“Oh, I’ve missed you….”
“It’s only been three days,” she whispered, loving him for his words and agreeing with them wholeheartedly.
“It seems more like three months!” His lips pressed sensuous kisses to her face and her neck.
“And you look so pretty. I’m almost going to hate taking this off.” But his fingers moved to the front buttons of her blouse as she tugged at his tie, and before long they were naked in each other’s arms, kissing and caressing with the hunger that three days’ loneliness had built.
Daniel eased her back down to the sheets, covered her body with his, and entered her as smoothly as though their bodies had been one all along. Preliminaries were a luxury their mutual need did not allow. The leisurely savoring of flesh and curves, of muscles and hollows, would be for later. Now the race was toward fulfillment.
Nia loved Dan with every ounce of her being, rising to meet him, crying out as he filled her. In turn she held him to her greedily, adoring every inch of him. When the moment of inner explosion came it was a simultaneous experience of breathtaking beauty, a set of moments suspended in time—the pinnacle of love. As she lay against him in its aftermath her tears spread to the warmth of his chest to mingle with the sweat of their frenzied loving.
“Don’t cry, babe. It’s all right,” he crooned, then caught his own uneven breath and held her more tightly.
She wondered. Would it be all right? Would she ever have Daniel Strahan as her own, truly her own? Would she ever have the glory of knowing that he would be hers tomorrow— and for every tomorrow that might exist? For that was how she wanted him—despite every rational argument against it. She did want him forever.
With the exception of the three hours spent at the Los Angeles Forum, Nia did not leave the hotel room once. For that matter, she didn’t even dress—other than for the game and then the return trip to the airport on Friday morning. Daniel didn’t do much better on that score, seeming to be perfectly at ease wandering around the room in the altogether, letting room service in with nothing but a towel knotted at his hip, feeling most happy in bed beside Nia.
The game itself was anti-climactic for them both, particularly since the playoff berth had already been secured. Daniel seemed totally immersed in her during the time they spent together, and though he gave the Breakers his intense concentration during court time, private time was totally private. Indeed, as he had said on that very first day she’d met him, his personal life was his own. At the time she had been sorry; now she could not have been more pleased.
The twenty-four hours went all too quickly. Long before she might have wished it, Nia was airborne for San Francisco, having left Daniel behind with the promise of a reunion three days hence, on Monday morning. Knowing she would see him then made leaving more bearable, as did the prospect of seeing her family.
It had been over four months since she’d been home. Both her parents were there to meet the plane, and their subsequent luncheon celebration was duly jubilant. She told them all about her work, including the project she had been sent west to do, a feature on silk screening in the San Franciscan art community. She told them about the fire in Cambridge and, at last, about Daniel. It had been her hope that he might join them all for dinner on Monday night at the house; her parents were totally agreeable. If they felt uneasy about Daniel’s occupation and its coincidental relationship to their ex-son-in-law’s, they said nothing. Their daughter was a grown woman, with a very distinct mind of her own. The fact that she was so obviously happy satisfied them.
Nia spent the rest of the day relaxing with her parents in Hillsborough. Their spacious family home was every bit as lovely as it had always seemed to her, even in those years of her rebellion. Now, as she wandered about, talking with her mother, then her father, then her brothers, when they sauntered in from college classes, she saw a beauty here she’d never quite recognized or been able to appreciate before. There was a warmth in this house, a sense of family. For the very first time she could identify with it.
As had been prearranged by Bill, Nia was busy enough on both Saturday and Sunday, interviewing artists and patrons of the arts, to keep her thoughts from her obsession with Daniel. Using her mother’s car, she visited galleries and lofts, studios and workshops, where the cream of the local printmakers exhibited and worked. Though exhausted by Sunday night, she felt that she had gathered a wealth of information around which, with proper additional research, she could organize an interesting feature. She was even taken to dinner on Sunday evening by Bill Austen’s counterpart on the Western Edge staff. And though the conversation was stimulating and the company easy, her sights were already set ahead to Monday morning and the plane that would be arriving at 10:35 from Oregon.
She was there to meet it half-an-hour early, took a seat by the arrival gate, and waited patiently for its approach. No one in the waiting room would have guessed that the attractive young woman in slim-fitting designer jeans and a dolman-sleeved vee-neck top of burgundy chenille, who sat with such a peaceful, almost beatific expression on her face was, in another life and a coast away, a spirited reporter. Nor would they have guessed that she was madly, passionately in love with Daniel Strahan, for she stood quietly while the passengers filed into the terminal in clumps of two and three, smiling brightly only when one separated himself from a group of giants and approached. They stood face to face for a minute, murmuring soft hellos until, in a simultaneous motion, each put an arm about the other’s waist and they walked off down the busy corridor.
Their rendezvous in Los Angeles had been nearly complete in its privacy; their San Francisco sojourn was the opposite. Between the team meeting and practice that, of necessity, occupied Dan for most of Monday afternoon, and the dinner in Hillsborough that Nia’s parents had given so graciously, they were barely able to exchange much more than the occasional soulful kiss. Nia had convinced him to spend the night at her parents’ house; by the end of the evening she regretted the decision. For everything that a hotel room might have lacked in personal warmth, it would have afforded them the luxury of the privacy they craved. For Nia the intimacy of their lovemaking was the only means she had of expressing her love. In being denied that outlet she felt inordinately frustrated. It seemed the hardest thing she’d ever done to show him to his room later that night, then turn and retreat with her own quiet ache.
She barely made it to her own room. Damn it! Her parents knew that she was no longer a virgin! They also knew that she was nearly thirty! Her decision was made in a flash of rebellion reminiscent of days gone by. With a lighter heart she stripped, showered, and dressed in her robe and gown, then retraced her steps, barefooted, to the opposite end of the house. Without so much as a knock she entered the darkened room and shut the door behind her.
Daniel was in bed on his back, the sheets bunched carelessly across his hips, his chest bare and broad as his forearm covered his eyes. She assumed that he had just dozed off, for his breathing was slow and steady. He appeared to be totally oblivious to her entrance.
Pausing only to
take off her robe and drop it over a chair, Nia crept forward and pulled the sheet back only far enough to slide in underneath and into bed beside him. His bodily warmth immediately reached out to her, and she nestled close against him. At that instant a strong arm came from nowhere to curve about her back and hold her even more snugly. Surprised but pleased, she looked up to meet Daniel’s open amusement.
“I was wondering when you’d get here,” he whispered with a roguish grin.
“You know me that well?” she whispered through her own sheepish smile.
“I know us. If you hadn’t come here I would have gone looking for you.”
Nia cuddled against him, resting her chin at the spot on his chest just above his nipple. His body hair was soft against her skin, his scent pure male. “That would have been cute! You don’t know which room is mine.”
“I’d have found it.”
“You’d probably have found one of my brothers.”
“They would have directed me.”
“That sure of them, are you?”
“Uh-huh.”
He had cause. Daniel Strahan had made a conquest of her family such as she would never have believed possible, particularly given her own past. By rights they should have been wary of him, perhaps somewhat in awe of his marginal star status, but wary nonetheless. Wariness was the last thing he had evoked tonight. And it was the last thing Nia felt right now. She had a totally different kind of conquest in mind and Daniel was in accord.
“Come here, babe,” he whispered hoarsely as he pulled her over onto him, hauled her up his body so that her lips met his, and kissed her with every bit of the passion he’d felt all day but been unable to express. “I’ve missed you,” he mumbled against her lips, then kissed her again and again.
Nia responded to him with the bounty of the love she felt. It was always this way between Daniel and her. Hadn’t she known it would be? During the weeks they’d known each other before they’d become lovers they had both known that, once satisfied, the need would only increase. And so it had. Now, as the flow of passion raced hotly through her she could only run with it and see it to fulfillment. Her love would permit nothing less.
Daniel shifted and the bed creaked loudly. He froze, waited, then shook his head in dismay. He hadn’t even noted the noise before; then there had been no cause! “Your mother is a wily woman,” he moaned, then tested the springs again in a way that nearly drove Nia wild. With every move a telling groan arose from somewhere amid mattress, box spring, bed frame and hard oak floor. His sturdy weight would do it every time.
Nia smothered her disheartened laugh against his arm. “We could always sneak back to my bed….”
“No way,” he whispered more confidently. “This is a challenge. A test of our …our…compatibility.”
“What do you mean—our compatibility? If we can’t do anything—”
“Oh, we can do plenty. Just watch.”
There was actually nothing to watch, for she soon closed her eyes and gave herself up to the wealth of sensation that Daniel proceeded to rouse in her. Every movement was slow and sensuous as, lying on their sides facing one another, he touched her body, tracing her curves through the silk of her nightgown, running his hand her slender length, then returning via the inside route to set her flesh aflame. She gasped when his hand moved higher, arching against him in mindless need, reaching to touch him as wonderingly, wanting to know that the simplicity of her touch could incite him as quickly.
The quiet of the night was broken only by their soft whispers and helpless gasps as each tried to control the urge to give in to frenzy. It was as much an exercise in self-control as in compatibility, and they passed with flying colors.
Nia thought there had never been anything as magnificent as the tall man stretched on his side before her. Her palm skimmed the sinewed swells of his chest and rounded his shoulder to run down his arm before dropping to his warm but rock-hard thigh. He wore a pair of briefs, more than he usually wore when they were together. Perhaps he hadn’t been all that sure they’d be able to manage a nighttime tryst after all. She smiled. But she knew what would bring him pleasure and she pandered to it.
Daniel moaned softly at her ministrations, which had quickly, skillfully, made a mockery of his scant covering. “Oh, babe,” he whispered raggedly, moments before he eased them completely off and reached for her. Still on their sides, he worked her gown up to her waist, cupped the softness of her bottom, and pulled her closer. One long, hair-roughened thigh slid between hers and she knowingly hooked her top leg higher.
“Nia…” he whispered again as he brought them together, then muffled her own outcry with his lips as he buried himself deep within her and held her tightly. “Don’t move, babe. Just feel it,” he rasped, his breath warm against her cheek. She could only purr her acknowledgment from the back of her throat, a feline sound of contentment. It would never have occurred to her to lie quietly like this, belying the internally ecstatic madness she felt. But then, she had taken so much in life for granted—until circumstances took a turn that reoriented things. Hadn’t that been the case when she originally met Daniel? She had seen her life as perfectly satisfactory, until he had, unintentionally perhaps, shown her a world beyond.
Now he moved. Slowly. Carefully. With a sensual glide, an ebb and flow. The sensation was electric, a leisurely flame that grew hotter and hotter with each measured thrust until control became a poignant memory and she exploded into a world of unsuspected sensuality. As though her rapture triggered his own, Daniel tensed, then soared, clutching her against him with every bit of his strength.
The risk of discovery had been worth the glory of their passion, suffusing Nia with the glow that stayed with her for the rest of their stay. It was her mother, however, who put a name to it in those last moments at the airport on Wednesday morning.
“Do you love him, Antonia?” she whispered for Nia’s ears alone as the two women stood, elbows linked, watching the stream of tall basketball players amble past. Daniel had already boarded; Nia would join him presently.
Her head swung to face her mother in surprise. But her mother most definitely knew. The question was only a formality. “Yes,” she murmured softly. “Very much.”
“He loves you.”
“No.” Nia looked down, frowned, shook her head slowly. “I don’t know. He’s got his life…his game. We get along well…beautifully. But I don’t know if he actually loves me. He’s vehement about the fact that he’ll never tie a woman to his lifestyle. And he’s certainly not ready to settle down.”
“You’re sure?” her mother asked with an undercurrent of doubt produced by her own observations. “He seemed very happy with us. Tom and Randy could barely get him to talk about basketball; they hadn’t expected that he’d want to talk about much else, but his interest was in them, in us, in you.”
Nia wrinkled her nose in feigned nonchalance. “It’d never work, anyway. Even if he does love me, it’d never work.”
“I don’t know, Nia.” Her mother smiled with a knowing air. “It seems to me it already does!”
Her mother had raised a point that, subconsciously or not, Nia had refused to consider. She had a lot to think about as she kissed her mother good-bye, hugged her father in turn, and then went on to join Daniel for the flight back to Boston.
Ten
Something had changed. It was an almost imperceptible altering of their relationship, a kind of subtle expectancy that hung in the air without resolution. Had it been purely an internal thing Nia might have attributed it to her mother’s parting words and the thoughts they had triggered. But it came from Daniel as well, a sense of something being held back, of the final phrase not being said.
On the surface things were as lovely as before. Nia went to work on Thursday and Friday, arriving in Weston in time to watch the game each night, then had a late dinner waiting for Daniel when he returned. Their talk held a quiet poignancy, their lovemaking a strange urgency, as though each reached and rea
ched for something he wasn’t sure existed. In her heart Nia knew they were approaching a confrontation. But, guilty at her uncharacteristic timidity, she couldn’t quite bring it about herself. If her confession of love would endanger that which they now had together, she would withhold it…at least a little longer.
It was, ironically, Harlan McKay who brought it all down to the wire. His phone calls had often interrupted their privacy; his less-than-enthusiastic grimace had met Nia’s questioning gaze more than once. Trying to bear in mind Daniel’s patient rationalization, she stoically ignored his very evident dislike of her. Until that Sunday afternoon …when she could no longer brush it aside.
The game had been the last of the regular season and a fairly easy win over San Antonio. Nia had made a point of being there, partly to be with Daniel, and partly to test her own strength. For with the Spurs came David Phillips; she hadn’t seen him since meeting Daniel. As had been her greatest hope, she felt no pain at all when David saw her sitting close behind the Breaker bench and walked over to say hello. It was an entirely civil interchange on both sides and had proven something very important to Nia. It was this that she had hoped to tell Daniel as she waited in his office after the game. She had expected a longer delay than usual, what with the end-of-the-regular-season interviews and the obligatory locker room opening of champagne. The last person she had expected to appear in the office was Harlan McKay.
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