“Who’s playing?” he said with a growl. The wench. She was actually flirting. He knew that she wasn’t aware of how close he’d been to losing control earlier. Now, she was taunting him with her body. Hell, he had already lost it. No way he could stop himself if he continued to hold her. He dropped his arms from beneath her legs and let her slide down. The mineral water would hold her up.
“Oh, hell!” He hadn’t counted on her sliding straight down his body, clasping his waist, and holding on.
“What’s wrong?” She flung her head back and looked up at him, swallowing heavily. “Do you have a cramp?”
He groaned. “Yes, in my libido, darling.”
“Shall I massage it for you?”
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea. I don’t think this is a good idea either, but I can’t seem to stop myself.”
He lowered his mouth to hers, unable to stop himself.
“Oh, Joker,” she tried to say, threading her hands weakly through his hair. He was holding her, kissing her, and the water lifted her up against him, her legs shifting so that one slid between his.
“Oh, Lawdy, Miss Claudie,” he drawled between kisses, “we’re doing it again. This is heaven.”
“Yes, we are,” she responded, curling her legs around his, “and we aren’t at home either.”
The gentle undulations of her body against him did wicked things to his control, and he stopped kissing her and lifted her upward so that her legs were around his waist. He looked down at her with a puzzled expression on his face. “Not at home? What does that mean?”
“You do know that the Josey estate is called Elysium. I was beginning to think that I’d died, and you were a figment of heaven’s imagination.”
“Elysium, yes. I know. What does that mean?” One hand tangled in her hair while the other hand freed her breasts from the suit.
It wasn’t the heat of the water that was scorching her body. It was the man holding her. She felt his lips on her breast, and she gasped, arching her head back to allow him full access to her body. “It’s where the Greek gods went when they died,” she murmured, “a magical place of pleasure.”
“I like that,” Joker said as he released one breast and caught the other nipple between his fingers. “There is something magic about the house and gardens.”
“It’s those crocodiles,” Allison announced. “They’ll do it every time.” She felt her body quiver as his fingers left her breast and moved with whisper-light motions down her body. In seconds her suit was gone, and he was touching her intimately, finding the throbbing center of her desire.
“No, and it isn’t magic either, Beauty, it’s you and me.”
“Oh, Joker, what are you doing?” An unfamiliar heat ignited between her legs, and she let out a cry of anguish.
“Hush, darling, just let the magic work.”
The musical sound of the water vibrated off the rock walls, rising and dying down in no particular rhythm. Joker’s fingers moved delicately, probing and teasing. Lost in the myriad of sensation she opened herself to him, taking his tongue inside her mouth and his fingers inside her body. Her muscles contracted, and she pressed herself against him.
“Oh, Joker … I want … I need …”
“I know,” he whispered, as he lifted her to a rock that bordered the side of the pool and moved his mouth down her body, planting maddening little kisses across her rib cage and lower …
“Joker …” She clutched his shoulders and opened her mouth, arching herself shamelessly against him. She wanted to scream. She wanted to feel him inside her. She hadn’t known she could be so hot. And then she felt it, the roaring tempo of blood rushing to the core of her being. She couldn’t stop herself. It was happening, a shattering pleasure that ripped through her and took her breath away. There was only feeling and heat and a breathtaking pleasure that lingered even after Joker had pulled away, lifted her into his arms, and wrapped her in her towel once more.
“That’s never happened before,” she whispered.
“I’m glad,” he answered, and tightened his grip.
“It isn’t the house, is it? It’s you. Why? Why me?”
“I don’t make profound statements very often, Allison, but I’m going to try to tell you something I’ve never said to anybody. I’m a touching person because … because as long as I can reach out and touch someone, I know I’m not alone. People are abandoned in different ways, and they find their own kinds of reassurance. I want you, Allison, and you need what I can give.”
Allison stared at the bearded man holding her. He seemed larger than life, and his deep gray eyes reflected an uncertainty that struck a chord in her. “You’re not alone, dear Joker. I don’t know what I can give in return, but I’ll hold off your demons, if you’ll hold off mine.”
“You’ve got a deal, Beauty.” He grinned, helped her into her suit, lifted her, and walked back to the elevator, leaving a trail of footprints across the lobby floor.
Seven
From the moment they left the center Allison knew that they were going to make love. Her body was both curiously relaxed and zinging with electric impulses. The springs, she told herself, it was the chemical content of the water that made her feel as if she were fire and ice. But she knew that it wasn’t the minerals in the water. It was the man beside her.
In the van Joker reached across and took her hand, holding it for a long moment before he released it and started the engine. He didn’t speak, and yet she felt the magic of his thoughts reach out and reassure her. Allison sighed and leaned back against the plush velvet seat, closing her eyes and drinking in the ambiance of the night.
Joker saw the soft smile playing over her lips. Lord, she was beautiful. Her wet hair was washed back from her face, calling attention to deep blueblack eyes hidden by thick lashes. Everything about Allison was regal and mysterious in the streaked light and shadow of the van as they drove down the tree-lined street.
“Are you warm enough?” Joker knew he was driving too fast. “I should have gotten another towel for your hair.”
“I’m all right, I think, but you may have a permanent imprint of my … me on your seat.” Her teeth chattered slightly, and she knew it wasn’t because she was cold.
“Happy van,” Joker said huskily. “Now you’ve left your imprint on both of us.” He wanted to take her hand and show her how much of an imprint she’d made on him. He’d thought the hardness would go away once he’d stopped touching her, but it hadn’t.
He was driving the van down the highway, almost stark naked, aching with need. It was all he could do to keep from stopping the van, throwing her down on the plush bed in the back, and fulfilling the fantasy she’d introduced earlier with her question. Instead, he waited for the first red light, reached out, and pulled her over for a quick intimate kiss that only made everything worse.
“I wish you’d stop kissing me, Joker. You make me want … No, that’s a lie. I want you to kiss me. I like you to touch me. I like the way you make me feel. I just wish I didn’t.”
“There’s nothing wrong with what we feel, Allison. It isn’t often that two people find each other as we have. Why does it bother you so much?”
“It’s hard to explain. I feel as if you’re a figment of my imagination. I don’t even know your real name.”
“My name is important to you?”
“No, not exactly. But the name Joker is wrong somehow. I know it. I think there must be some reason why you’d rather I call you Joker than tell me the truth.”
Joker felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. The truth? Hell’s doorknobs, for too long he’d just said whatever made things easier for the person he was dealing with. He wasn’t sure that he could be completely honest. Or could he? How would she feel if she learned that he was one of the Vandergriffs? Maybe if he started at the beginning.
“Why not? Okay, I’ll give it a go. With no supervision I was a pretty wild kid. I’m lucky I didn’t end up in some juvenile home.”
&nbs
p; “I guess I am too,” Allison whispered under her breath. “You mentioned your father drank.”
“That’s saying it nicely. I told you that my mother left us. Then Pop died when I was sixteen. Or that’s when his body quit. He gave up a long time before that.”
“It’s bad, not having a mother. I was lucky. At least I had Gran.”
“Maybe. I don’t know. My sister Diamond doesn’t remember mother at all. Neither do I, really. Except every now and then I’ll catch a certain smell or touch something soft, and for just a second I can see her. And then she’s gone.”
“Having to raise four children must have been hard on your father. How did he manage the baby?”
“He didn’t. He had a sister that kept her while the rest of us were in school. Afterward, one of us took care of her. Most of the time it was me. I was five years older. You’d be surprised what an enterprising fellow can do with a baby as a front.”
“Joker!”
“Well, there are lots of kindhearted people in the world willing to help a motherless infant.”
“Did your brothers know what you were doing with that innocent child?”
“My brothers handled not having a mother better than I did, I guess. They went to school and to work, anything to keep from having to come home. Then, when Diamond was eight, Pop’s sister took her permanently.”
“What about you?” The more Allison heard about Joker’s childhood the more she understood how important Elysium and her grandmother must be to him.
“Me? Oh, she offered to take me, too, but I couldn’t leave. Somebody had to take care of Pop while Jack and King worked.”
“I wish I’d known you then. I think we could have been friends.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You probably wouldn’t have liked me. I was a first-class jerk. To cover up my insecurity I became a clown, a hustler.”
“So that’s where you got the name Joker. But what did your mother call you?”
“My mother gave us respectable names, but there was a time once, when Pop had a sense of humor. My oldest brother Arthur became King. The next in line, Jackson, became Jack. My sister’s real name is Lillian. Pop changed that to Diamond Lil and finally to Diamond.”
“Jack, King, Diamond, and Joker. Your father must have been a gambler?”
“Yes. Not a very good one, I’m afraid.”
“And the queen?”
“That was Mother. My dad called my mother Queenie, until the day he died. We were supposed to be his royal flush. Except he never made any money, and we weren’t even good luck.”
“But the names stuck.”
“As I got older and Pop got … sicker, I took my name seriously. I really hustled for money. Joker just seemed to fit my life-style.”
No mother or father? She could understand that. All she knew about her father was that he’d been a marine. She’d pretended that he was a wonderful, handsome young man who’d been killed in some senseless training accident without ever knowing that his sweetheart was pregnant. But that was all pretense. The only thing she knew for certain was that an automobile accident had taken her mother less than a year after she’d been born. If it hadn’t been for Gran, she could have suffered the same fate as Joker, perhaps worse.
“You told me your brothers’ and sister’s names, but you didn’t tell me yours. Tell me now. What is your real name?”
“James Daniel Vandergriff,” he finally said in a rush, “but nobody has ever called me anything but Joker.”
“Vandergriff, as in the firm that built the Golf and Tennis Retirement Community and the Sports Medicine Rehabilitation Center?”
“Yes. Are you upset that I didn’t tell you in the beginning? I was afraid that you’d be angry about my buying the estate, since my family is in the development business.”
She moved closer and laid her hand on his bare thigh. “Angry? No, I’m not angry. I know you love Elysium. Thank you, Jamie.”
All sad thoughts went right out of Joker’s mind. “Jamie?” He almost choked. “Really now, do I look like a Jamie?”
“You look exactly like a Jamie, a big, sweet, lovable, Jamie.”
“Well, I like the lovable part anyway.” If the hand circling his thigh took any wider a path, she’d find out just how lovable he was prepared to be.
“Tell me about the real Jamie. What makes him special. I need to understand.”
“I’d rather discuss the sweet, lovable part of me,” he said with a grin and leaned toward her.
“I’d rather hear about the wicked part of you. Tell me why you need to gamble when your family owns the springs. You don’t really need money, do you?” She gave his thigh a squeeze of encouragement.
“No!” His voice was too loud. But in giving her squeeze of approval, her hand was playing a wild game with the rest of his body. “I’m not really a gambler. I don’t just gamble. I mean I do, but only when it’s necessary. I mean, it’s never for me. I’ve only gambled for somebody else.”
“Like me? Would you gamble for me, Jamie?”
“Well, yes, but …” He pulled his attention from the fingertips drawing little electric circles on his bare leg, and tried to give her the answer she deserved. “I don’t know if you’re going to believe this. I don’t talk about it, but I seem to have some kind of sixth sense that gives me feedback. I mean, when I touch something, I can feel a positive or a negative response. When I get that positive feeling, I just know that it’s right.”
“For instance when you touch my knee. You can feel some kind of … energy there that responds?”
Joker looked at her in shock. “Yes. That’s it exactly. How’d you know?”
“I feel it too. It’s as if you create a kind of heat field that acts on the weakness. But what does that have to do with gambling?”
Joker left the main road and turned into the driveway of the estate as he considered his answer. He was going to have to put something into words that he wasn’t certain he understood. Even his brothers and sister didn’t know the truth. He stopped the van in the courtyard near the back door and killed the engine.
“I’m not sure, Beauty. But when I go to a horse race, the animals seem to respond to me. If I can get into the stable to touch them, I just know, which one will win. The same way I can touch a flower or a plant and I’ll know which one needs me. If I touch it often enough, it will respond and grow.”
“And that’s why you keep touching me?”
“That’s why I touched you in the beginning. Now? I touch you because I need to.” He took her shoulder and turned her to face him, slipped the other hand under her chin, and tilted her face upward. “Don’t you feel how much I need you, Beauty?”
“Yes,” she admitted breathlessly, moving her hand from his leg to his chest. “I think I’m beginning to understand. It’s just that I’ve never been a touching person. I’m nearly twenty-seven years old and except for Mark, I’ve never been with a man.”
“I’m glad.”
She lowered her head and smiled. “I don’t know how to tell you, Jamie, but it’s different with you. I go crazy when you touch me, even though Mark said I was cold. Sometimes you’re overwhelming.”
“I am? I don’t mean to be.”
“Yes, you do, and,” she whispered unsteadily, “and I think I’m beginning to understand why.”
“You are?” He drew in a deep breath and brushed his lips across hers.
Her hands moved slowly down his chest to his hips. He was driving her crazy, and he knew it. She wanted him to feel the same conflicting emotions she was feeling. It was time to drive him a little crazy.
Allison grinned, took a deep breath, and spoke her words in a rush before she lost the courage. “The problem is the swimsuit, Jamie Daniel. I really think you ought to take it off.”
Joker couldn’t breathe, and he was sure that his heart had completely stopped.
“Take—it—off?” He hadn’t heard her right. She couldn’t be inviting him to strip naked in the front seat of his
van.
“Either that,” her voice cracked foolishly as it trailed away, “or get one two sizes larger. I think this one is definitely cutting off the flow of blood to your head.”
The ripple of his chest beneath her touch strengthened her purpose. “Dreadful for the circulation. And it isn’t good for the thinking process either.” She trailed her fingertips downward, across his navel, across the part of the suit that was definitely being stressed to the maximum, and back to the chest. “Let’s go inside, Jamie.”
Joker felt Allison shift to the other side of the van and heard the door open. She’d touched him. She’d deliberately reached out and put her hands on his pulsating body. The woman was slipping over the edge. It had to be the lithium water in the springs—some kind of reverse kinetic effect. Hell, she’d practically invited him to … what? He didn’t know. His brain wasn’t functioning because all his blood was in one throbbing part of him. All he knew was that he was sitting in the van like some dumbstruck kid.
“Ah, Beauty. I think you’re probably right about the swim trunks. What exactly did you have in mind?”
“Well … I’m not sure. Those springs of yours are certainly invigorating. I’m hungry. I think I’d like some fried chicken. What about you?”
“Fried chicken!” Joker’s voice exploded, “You’re hungry? For food?” The problem with the swimsuit immediately vanished as he opened the van door, strode to the other side, and opened it.
Allison swallowed hard. Saying it out loud was suddenly difficult. She wanted to feel him against her, inside her.
“You really do want to make love to me, Jamie, don’t you? You’re not just doing it as part of my therapy, are you?”
“No! I mean yes, I want to make love to you, and no, it isn’t part of any therapy.” His voice was almost harsh in reply. “But I won’t touch you unless you’re sure. Be sure, Allison. Before I take you up those stairs, be sure.”
Allison knew that he was offering her the opportunity to say no. He wouldn’t force her, though they both knew full well that all he had to do was kiss her, and she’d give in without a protest.
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