Forever Instinct, The

by Delinsky, Barbara

  “Work. Success.”

  “And…?”

  “That’s it,” she lied. “Very simple.”

  “Very dry. Very boring. Surely you fantasize. About men. Love. Sex.”

  “Do you?”

  “About men? Not quite. About love and sex? All the time.”

  “Tell me,” she coaxed, turning the tables. “What are your greatest fantasies?”

  “Oh, I dream about a woman, the woman.”

  “What does she look like?”

  “I don’t know,” he murmured. “It’s not her looks that make her so special. It’s her warmth. Her individuality. Her caring. That’s it. Her caring. She cares for me above and beyond anything and everything else in life.”

  “A pretty self-centered fantasy, isn’t it?”

  “Hell, no. I care for her the same way. It’s just that, well, I’ve never really had anyone who cared for me that much… and it matters.”

  “What about your parents? Surely they loved you.”

  “Oh, yeah. They did. Me and my four brothers and three sisters.”

  “Eight kids? Wow, that’s great!”

  “Not when you want that little bit of individual attention. I was the baby. My older siblings were stuck looking after me more often than not. And I do mean stuck. They weren’t terribly thrilled about having a constant tagalong. When I took to playing football, we were all relieved.”

  “You started playing young?”

  “I was seven when I began tackling kids on the street. I began throwing the ball a year later. When I was nine I joined a peewee league. You know the rest.”

  But she hadn’t known the first, and it was enlightening, to say the least. It certainly explained his drive, not to mention the frustration he must have felt coming in second to Peter Kirkland all those years.

  “Your parents must have been proud of what you made of yourself.”

  “I suppose. But we were never close. I resented them for years.”

  “Do you still?”

  “They’re dead.”

  “Oh, Pat, I’m sorry.”

  He paused then, growing more pensive. “I am too. It took a lot of growing up for me to begin to understand that they did what they had to do.” His voice hardened. “But I’ll never do that to a kid of mine. I want two kids. That’s all. And I’ll give them everything I’ve got.”

  “You’ll spoil them rotten.”

  His laugh was gentle once more. “Which is why I need a good woman to keep me in line. So, angel, how about it?”

  “How about what?”

  “That good-night kiss,” he whispered from close by her lips. “Now that I’ve spilled my gut, you owe me.”

  “Why do I feel I’ve been manipulated?” she returned, her breath suddenly in short supply.

  “Not yet. If you want–” he curved his fingers around her shoulder and turned her toward him “–I’d be glad to comply.”

  “Patrick…” she whispered in warning.

  “Just a kiss. One kiss.” Without awaiting her reply, he closed the tiny distance between them, molding his mouth to hers as his arms completed a circle of her back and drew her on top of him.

  Jordanna simply couldn’t resist his virile call. She found him far too attractive to begin with and, now that he’d let her into his private domain, felt all the more drawn to him. For the moment it didn’t matter that he’d been Peter’s rival all those years, or that there were four men within easy hearing distance. The tent was their shield, the night further fortification. She gave herself up to his kiss because he touched something raw within her, something that all the protestation in the world couldn’t deny.

  His lips opened searingly over hers, caressing her warmth, partaking of her essence. Again and again he drank of her, draining her until the thirst was mutual and acute. His tongue thrust deeply, scorching hers, matching its length, then drawing it into his own mouth. When his arms left her back to frame her face, she bolstered herself on her palms. Only then did his lips release hers to lie half open against her cheek.

  “Well…?” she whispered tremulously.

  “Better than the first. I think… we’re in… trouble.” The slight adjustment he made in the positioning of his hips elaborated on the problem.

  “I think I’d better get back on my side of the tent,” she mumbled, but when she made to do so, he slipped his hands beneath her arms and held her still.

  “No. Not yet.”

  “We’ve been over this before, Pat. It’s not sane.”

  “But it sure feels good,” he rasped, then took her mouth again with the sureness of a magnet drawn to its kind. And Jordanna was helpless, riveted to him by the seeking spirals of desire curling through her veins. “Tell me it doesn’t,” he dared, when at last he came up for a breath.

  “It does. It does,” she cried. “But that’s not the point.”

  “You’re damn right,” he said with another meaningful shift of his hips. “It’s lower and deeper and–”

  “Shh!” She brought a hand to his mouth, then gasped when his own took advantage of her move and slid to encircle her breast.

  He moaned softly. “Oh, God, Jordanna. You’re so firm. So full.” His hand gently kneaded her, his thumb finding then teasing the tautness of her nipple.

  She sucked in a deeper breath and, closing her eyes, arched her back. Her one supporting arm trembled, but she could no more have removed herself from him than she could have denied, at that moment, the very obvious proof of her arousal.

  “Come here,” he growled, hauling her higher until his lips touched the fullness of her breast. Through the fabric of her shirt he nibbled at her flesh. His tongue dampened the thermal cloth, sending a fiery heat through her skin toward her most feminine core.

  Lost in a world of exquisite pleasure, Jordanna sighed his name. She lowered her head and buried her face in his hair, breathing deeply of its clean male scent. Through vague remnants of lucidity, she wondered how anyone could smell so clean after traipsing through the woods for the better part of two days, then realized that what struck her senses was the sheer maleness of Patrick Clayes. Chemistrywise, he could do no wrong.

  Intentionwise, not so. Suddenly, he was a whirlwind of action, setting her down on her back and fighting with the darkness for something she couldn’t fathom.

  “What are you doing?” she gasped, twisting as his hands searched on either side of her.

  “The damn sleeping bag’s in the way,” he growled, sitting up and continuing his struggle. “We’ve got to get them together–”

  Miraculously she found his hands and anchored them to her chest. “No!” she cried, then lowered her voice to a husky whisper. “No, Pat. Please. Don’t.”

  He was breathing heavily. She all but felt the ragged rise and fall of his chest a foot above her. “Why not? You felt what I did.”

  “But it’s wrong,” she went on breathlessly, holding his hands all the more tightly, fearful of what might happen should he touch her again. “It’s wrong. We have too much to fight, you and I. You heard the guys before. They said we were talking football. Well, we were, in a way. Your past is football. So is mine, in a sense. The only difference is that where football for you was a saving grace, for me it was hell. Pure hell.”

  Though his hands remained coiled steel in hers, Patrick went very still. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Oh, no, I’m not. That game–”

  “Not about football,” he snapped. “About stopping.”

  “That too,” she whispered on a breath of despair.

  “Good Lord, do you have any idea–”

  The sharp squeeze she gave his hands stilled his words. “I do. I know what you feel. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel the same. Frustration isn’t a man’s prerogative, y’know.” When he fell back onto his sleeping bag, she released his hands.

  “Ah, hell. Another lecture on sexism.”

  Jordanna stiffened, curling her now empty fingers into the material of
her sleeping bag. “I don’t give lectures on sexism. I state facts.”

  “Well, so do I,” Patrick countered, rearing up once more and leaning close. “And the facts are, one, that I need you, and, two, that you need me.”

  “You’ve forgotten several others,” she stated in a pained voice. “Three, neither of us goes in for casual affairs. Four, we’ve got to be able to live with ourselves in the morning. Five, we have another three days of trekking through the woods with a group of men who’ll make the most out of any relationship we have. And six, come Friday night we go our separate ways.” She lowered her voice. “Not to mention the facts that, seven, I’m Peter Kirkland’s ex-wife and you’re through with taking seconds, and, eight, that I’ve had my fill of athletic egotists.”

  She stopped then, breathless and spent. Patrick was as speechless.

  When at last he spoke, his words were preceded by a weary sigh. “Well, I guess you’ve covered everything. Good night, Jordanna.” Turning away from her, he lay perfectly still.

  It took Jordanna far longer to quiet her rampaging nerves.

  WEDNESDAY MORNING dawned bleak and overcast, a fitting backdrop to Jordanna’s mood. Awakening to find herself alone in the tent, she snatched up her things and headed for the stream. She was relieved to find the campsite quiet. The last thing she needed was a smart comment from one of the men about something that might have been overheard in the night.

  Head down, brows drawn together, she distractedly followed the path. When she reached the edge of the stream, she put down her things, then straightened, moaning aloud when the muscles of her back protested the simple movement.

  “What’s wrong, Jordanna?” came a deep voice from the side. “Feeling stiff?”

  Her gaze spun to focus on Patrick, who leaned indolently against the peeling trunk of a tall birch. “Playing Peeping Tom today?” she snapped, to cover her surprise. Not that she shouldn’t have guessed he might be here. After all, he hadn’t been in the tent, and he hadn’t been in the campsite’s clearing.

  He stood his ground, holding her gaze. “Just answering nature’s call,” he announced bluntly. “What’s your excuse?”

  “I might say the same, but I guess it’ll have to wait.” Turning back to the stream, she knelt, gingerly submerged her hands in the cold water, then pressed them to her face.

  “Not a morning person, I gather?” he asked, from closer this time. When Jordanna didn’t answer but simply kept her cold fingers pressed to her eyes, he spoke again, more gently this time. “If it’s any solace, I’ve just walked off some of my own black mood. I didn’t think anyone else would be up this early.”

  “What time is it?” she murmured, dipping her hands in the water again and reapplying them to her face.

  “Seven.”

  She moaned softly. “Must be force of habit.…” She quickly splashed her face several times in succession, gasped against the cold, then reached to the side and pressed her towel to her face. When firm hands began a gentle massage of her shoulders, she stiffened only momentarily before relaxing under the patient ministration.

  “That’s it,” he coaxed softly. “That’s it. Just let go.”

  With a shuddering breath, she dropped her head back, then forward again. “I’m so tired,” she murmured, any annoyance she might have felt toward Patrick forgotten as his deft thumbs kneaded the taut lines of her neck.

  “You’ve kept right up with the rest. You should feel proud of that.”

  “But I’m so tired. I swear I could sleep for a week.”

  “All you need is a good night’s rest. That’s three in a row now without, hmm?”

  “Mmm.”

  From his haunches, Patrick slid his knees to the ground and eased Jordanna back into the cradle of his thighs. His mouth was by her temple, his arms overlapping below her breasts. “The soreness will wear off once we get going. It always does.”

  “I don’t know. The thought of lifting that pack doesn’t thrill me.”

  “I could take some of your load.”

  “And let the others think I’m giving in? No way.”

  “You know, you can only fight being a woman up to a point. It’s a biological fact that a woman’s body has a lower proportion of muscle than a man’s. It’d be only natural if you–”

  “I’m okay,” she asserted, but made no move to withdraw from the comfortable haven he offered. It was the most welcome support she’d had in days.

  Patrick slid his cheek against her hair. “You’re an enigma to me, Jordanna. Do you know that?”

  “Me? An enigma? I thought I was pretty straightforward.”

  “That’s part of the fascination. You’re so in command at times, then at other times, like now, so much more vulnerable. I don’t think I’ve known anyone with quite so many facets, and I get the strange feeling that I haven’t seen half.”

  Her chuckle was soft and short. “Neither have I. I constantly surprise myself.” Most surprising was the way she was yielding once again to Patrick’s appeal.

  “Tell me you like the theater.”

  “Living in Manhattan? Of course.”

  “And P. J. Clark’s?”

  “Hamburgers on paper plates with super steak fries and an occasional celebrity or two? You bet.”

  “And alfalfa sprouts?”

  “Nice and crunchy. Sure.”

  “And the late, late show on TV?”

  “As long as it’s a two-tissue romance.”

  She had barely realized her confession when the snap and rustle of footsteps on the woodland floor heralded new arrivals.

  “Oh, Lord,” Donald moaned, but there was a teasing note to his voice, “they’re still at it.”

  “And here we thought they’d be holed up in that tent for another hour at least,” Larry quipped.

  Coming to stand before the stream, John glanced down. “Guess we won’t be throwing the water through the flap after all.”

  Neither releasing Jordanna nor looking up, Patrick grinned against her hair. “Try that, bud, and you’re apt to find something wet and wriggly in your boot.”

  Jordanna withered into Patrick. “Oh, God, are there snakes around here?”

  His response was flush by her ear. “None that you’ll see. But I know where to look and if need be–”

  “He’s serious, guys,” she called out loud and clear. “Better watch it with the water. For that matter, better watch it with the wisecracks. If he’s offended, there’s no telling what the man might do.”

  A groggy Bill emerged from the path and came to a standstill looking disgruntledly toward the duo by the stream. “What’re they doing?”

  “Come to think of it, we never did find out,” John stated.

  “What are you doing?” Larry asked more directly.

  Jordanna dropped her gaze to the stream and in so doing missed the look of utter blankness on Patrick’s face. “Doing? Us?” He squeezed her middle when she began to snicker. “Ah, we’re… we’re washing. That is, I was showing Jordanna how to wash.” He lowered his voice in a conspiratorial manner. “You know how it is with city women. They’re kind of slow – ah!” Jordanna’s elbow caught him in the ribs. He released her as he would a hot potato and stood. “And ornery first thing in the morning. You guys can have ’er!” With that, he turned on his heel and headed back toward camp.

  Taking his departure with good grace, Jordanna reached for her tube of moisturizing cream. Though she would never have opted for an audience had she had a choice, pride held her rooted to the spot.

  “Whaddya say, guys?” Bill asked good-naturedly. “Who wants her? John?”

  “No, thanks. She’s too good on the trail. I can barely keep up. My ego’s taking a bruising.”

  “Larry?”

  “Are you kidding? She probably earns twice what I do.”

  “Don?”

  “Marie would kill me. Hey, how about you, wise guy? You’re the only bachelor around here.”

  While Jordanna very placidly massag
ed moisturizer onto her face and hands, looking for all the world as though she were alone by the stream, Bill made pretense of mulling a possible purchase, narrowing his eyes, stroking his stubbled jaw. “I dunno. She is kinda pretty.” Jordanna tipped her head to the side. “Nice neck. But she’s awful skinny.”

  “The word is slender,” Jordanna corrected with just the right amount of haughtiness, “and if I were five pounds heavier you’d probably be worrying about cellulite.”

  “Got a sharp tongue,” Bill went on. “And she can’t cook.” He gestured dismissively. “Clayes can have her back. Not a bad match, actually. He cooks and cleans, she earns the money, and in their spare time they–”

  “Talk football,” John interjected propitiously. “They’ve got a lot in common.” He shook his head. “Kirkland and Clayes… whew!”

  Suddenly, Jordanna had heard enough. Gathering her things quickly together, she rose and headed for the path. “Thank you, gentlemen,” she mocked on the move. “I can’t remember when I’ve awoken to such clever repartee.”

  “But that was only the first act… !” Donald called after her.

  Without missing a beat, she raised a hand. “I’m sure you’ll enthrall one another with the second and third. What I need right about now is a strong cup of coffee.”

  It helped, as did the relative silence in which she was allowed to eat breakfast. Though the sky remained overcast, her mood slowly improved. She felt anger neither toward the men, whose earlier teasing had been without malice, nor toward Patrick, whose nocturnal ardor had been replaced by a more objective civility.

  If he found her an enigma, she found him no different. But the confusion she felt regarding her feelings toward him were thrust to the back of her mind by the urgency of the day’s activities.

  With breakfast done, the tents disassembled and packs reloaded and donned, the troop set out on what was to be an easier trek than the day before had been. That was fortunate. Jordanna wasn’t the only one whose body had felt the strain; her voice was but the softest in a chorus of furtive moans when Patrick led them upstream toward Eagle Link.

  They stopped often, as much to admire the scenery as to pamper themselves. Jordanna found Patrick to be a wellspring of information regarding not only the history of the forest through which they passed but the wildlife and plant life as well. She wondered at the dedication behind such a store of knowledge; neither a football stadium nor a business office would have given him any of it. Then she remembered what he’d said about either doing things well or not doing them at all, and she surmised that somewhere in his library was a shelf or two filled with books on the great outdoors.