“Three weeks. Three agonizing weeks of waiting and watching beside Bianca Norris’s bed after I’d done all I could for her, praying that she could come out of that coma. You can’t imagine the loneliness.”
Her heart swelled, and moisture clouded her vision. Hurting for him, she moved closer and laced her fingers through his, but didn’t speak. She wanted him to let it all out.
“Would anyone have understood that, if it had been possible, I would have exchanged places with that woman? I couldn’t dump that on my brother and, when I walked away, I couldn’t make him understand, and he never accepted it.”
She decided to risk a question. “Why did you leave it all?”
He leaned back on the sofa and propped his right ankle on his left knee, and she let herself relax when she saw that he would continue. “I had become a society doctor, treating the wealthy, squiring around rich women—black ones, white ones, Latin ones, foreign ones—all decked out in designer clothes, wearing designer perfume and starving themselves to death in New York’s most expensive restaurants. I was in great demand, socially and professionally; doctors sent me their toughest cases, and I began to believe that I could do no wrong. In that operating room that morning, I got straightened out. I was not infallible. Later, I looked at myself and didn’t like what I had become. I no longer had time for Steve; I’d stopped going to church, quit volunteer work, and had even begun to neglect myself. No surgeon can make it indefinitely on five or six hours’ sleep, sometimes less, each night. I was busy at everything but what I should have been doing. I wouldn’t have noticed Skip, and I shudder to think what I would have missed.”
Her heart bloomed, a rose unfolding its petals, hammering an erratic rhythm, and she squeezed his hand in an effort to communicate to him the love that swelled inside of her.
* * *
He didn’t recall ever before having spilled his guts to anyone, and still more churned inside of him, struggling for release.
“I’m boring you with all this.”
She had wanted to know him, and he had opened himself to her. He started to draw himself inward, to put some distance between them, but her arm slid around him and tightened.
“Oh, no, my darling. You’re not boring me, you’re loving me.”
“What?”
Her other hand slid across his chest, and her head rested on his shoulder. “I said...I heard somewhere that to love is to give yourself, imperfections and all. And that’s what I wanted, all I wanted. Assurance that you’d let me be there for you when you needed love and understanding, because if you’d do that, you’d accept who I am as well.”
She was too good to be true, and he couldn’t help stiffening. From where he sat, all the saints were above.
“Nothing I told you makes you anxious? You don’t think less of me?”
Her soft hand caressed his face, and he leaned into it. “How could it? What I feel is sadness that, when you most needed someone who loved you, you had no one. Oh, you survived it; you’ll always do that, but life is easier and sweeter when it’s shared. Are you sorry you told me?” She watched his fingers dance on his knee as he strummed the way in which pianists exercise their fingers. Part of his thinking process, she realized.
“No. Oddly, I’m not sorry; I feel as though I’ve dropped a weight.” She snuggled closer, and he voiced a belated thought.
“Do you realize you called me darling? That’s a first. Why?”
“I feel closer to you.”
His pulse raced, and he had to gasp for the breath that lodged in his throat. “You’re saying nothing’s changed your feelings for me, that you love me?”
“More than ever. I realize that I hurt you when I said I didn’t know you and that you didn’t meet my needs, but I didn’t know any other way to express it.” Tears pooled in her eyes and wet his hand.
“Honey, don’t cry. It’s alright. I understand a lot of things now. Don’t... Ah, baby...it...there’s nothing to forgive. Sweetheart, I just wanted you to love me.”
“I do. Oh, I do. I...”
He covered her mouth and kissed her with all the passion that fermented inside of him, with love that screamed for his admittance.
“I need you,” she whispered. “Mason, I need you. It’s been so long. So long.” Shudders racked him when she parted her lips for his possessive kiss and pressed his fingers to her breast.
* * *
“Is that door locked?” She nodded impatiently, and he rose and raced with her up the stairs to her room. In the heat of passion, they couldn’t strip each other fast enough. Her fingers stumbled over the buttons on the front of his shirt, and he finally pulled it over his head. Her skirt zipper caught the woolen fabric, and she wanted him to tear it off of her. At last, he lay her on the bed.
“Let me,” she whispered, when he reached for his bikini underwear. Hot arrows of desire sliced through him, and he jumped to full readiness when she hooked her arms around him, drew him to her and kissed him. And he could hardly withstand the torture of wanting her when she lay back and opened her arms to him. He eased into the heaven of her embrace, his body screaming for gratification inside of her, but he gazed into her trusting, loving face and brought himself under control.
Jeannetta lifted her body to accept him, but he denied her, worried her mouth with his lips and traced a hot frenzied path to her neck, while his fingers toyed with her breasts. Her body began to beg for what she wanted, undulating from side to side, but he stilled her and covered a nipple with his lips, blowing on it until she begged him to suckle her. She couldn’t help crying aloud when at last his mouth began to pull on it, and his knowing fingers found the core of her passion and teased it until it released its love liquid.
“Mason, please... Honey, please. Please.”
He didn’t answer. His busy mouth found her other nipple and brought a keening cry from her. Frustrated, she hooked her leg over his thigh, reached for him, and tried to get what she wanted. He leaned over her and asked permission to enter.
“Yes, yes. For God’s sake, yes!” She tensed with anticipation as he gathered her in his arms, positioned himself at her love gate and thrust into her. She bucked beneath him, begging for immediate satisfaction, but he withdrew, held her still, and entered with a powerful surge. Slowly, he began the dance, and she caught his rhythm and let herself go.
“Are you with me, honey? Am I where you want me to be?”
She let her legs tighten around him. “Yes. Oh, yes. Mason, darling, I want to burst.”
“And you will.” Shower after shower of hot darts penetrated her feminine core as he began a lover’s kiss that simulated the movement of his body and duplicated the wizardry of his fingers between them. She couldn’t help crying out as the spasm began, and he accelerated his powerful strokes until her screams filled the room and she surrendered herself to him.
“Mason. Oh, Mason, love, I love you so.”
Her body clutched at him, demanding his total capitulation, and he splintered in her arms with words that he had never uttered before. “I love you, Jeannetta. I love you. Love you. You’re my life. Everything.”
* * *
Sated. Enervated. Drained. Long minutes passed before they spoke.
“I thought we were perfect together, that we’d reached the pinnacle of ecstasy,” he whispered, still secure within her, “but it was never like this. Never.” He propped himself on his elbows, and hugged her to him.
“I know. I used to feel empty inside for a long time after you sent me flying practically out of this world, and that bothered me. But now I know what it means to be fulfilled.” He pulled her closer.
“I...I love you, and I don’t mind saying it. I’ve loved you since Istanbul, do you know that?”
She could feel the smile that spread over her face, a smile of contentment. “I thought you loved
me, because you acted as if you did, but I didn’t know whether you knew it.”
“I knew it alright. You’re a wise woman.”
“How so?”
“That novel of yours, it set me to wondering.”
“I’d hoped it would.”
“And what a title! The Naked Soul of a Man in Love. It’s heavy stuff. Look. If I don’t have anything good to tell Skip tomorrow, my credit with him’s going to suffer. Do you know he actually offered to talk to you on my behalf if you turned me down? I ought to be as good at this as my twelve-year-old kid thinks he is.”
“What would you like to tell him?”
“That you’re going to be my wife and his mother.”
She gazed into eyes that blazed with love, knew that he offered more than she’d ever dreamed of wanting, and snuggled closer to him. But he moved away as though to emphasize business before pleasure.
“Well?”
“Fine with me. You’re just what I want and need. Both of you.”
He reached down beside the bed, took the old keys out of his pants pocket and pressed them into her hand.
“What’s this?”
“The keys to our home, the one we’ll build on a hill where we’ll see the sun rise in the morning and set in the evening.” She closed her fingers around them, snuggled closer and smiled. He gazed at her for long minutes, then turned to the business at hand, and she opened to the sweet honey of his love.
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781460306512
Copyright © 1997 by Gwendolyn Johnson-Acsadi
First published by BET Publications, LLC in 1997
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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