by Cindy Gerard
Her heart rejoiced, then plummeted back to earth as her discovery was made bittersweet by the truth. Only in his eyes would she ever see the love that equaled what she felt for him. Only in his eyes would she know the depth of his feelings.
I can’t give you more than today, he’d said. She’d known he’d spoken the truth. Whatever ghosts haunted him, they had the power, not her. He wasn’t free to love her. And he wasn’t here to stay.
Through misty eyes she watched him lower his head to her breast. Her heart aching, she witnessed the unqualified generosity of his loving until the passion he milked from her body transcended the pain.
She sighed his name as he pillowed his blond head between her breasts.
His tongue was bold and daring, his teeth shocking yet infinitely gentle. And his hunger was a fierce thing as he suckled, feeding from each pink-tipped bud, striving to sate an appetite that knew no limit.
His hunger fed her own. She pressed herself into his mouth, cupping his head in her hand and showing him with her caress how much she shared his need.
Sensual pleasure blended sweetly with an achingly tender emotion she’d never associated with lovemaking. Yet the yearnings she felt as he drew at her breast were intrinsically woven into the act of love. She felt protective and maternal as she cradled his head in her hands, and she held him until the ache to become one drove them both.
She guided his head to her mouth. When he moved over her, she welcomed him home. And when he finally filled her, she cried out with the joy of his possession.
He was virile strength and passion. She was melting warmth and yearning. Together, they were magic.
Long moments later, he whispered against her hair before he succumbed to the narcotic pull of sleep. “How am I ever going to leave you?”
She nestled deeper into his arms and went the same way he did. “How am I ever going to let you go?”
They slept the sleep of lovers until, stirred by the newness of each other and the undeniable awareness that they would soon part, they awakened to make love again.
The cover of darkness, diluted only by warming firelight, freed them to feel and experience without inhibitions. The night supplied what sleep provides for the subconscious mind. They hid in the darkness, playing by the fire glow. Cocooned by the intimacy of the isolation, they denied the existence of tomorrow.
There were no rules to restrain them. No rights to erect barriers, no wrongs to inflict guilt. There was only sensation and pleasure. Without words they acknowledged a void they both shared, then they filled it with each other.
The first faint traces of dawn mottled the morning sky with mauves and pinks and pearly gray when Jo awoke again. She looked lovingly down at the head pillowed on her stomach, the broad shoulders covering her hips.
Adam.
She sifted his golden hair through her fingers, smiling lazily when he reacted by cinching his arms tighter around her.
He was in the truest sense an intimate stranger, yet she’d never felt closer to another human soul. To have shared the physical act of love with him was a gift she couldn’t yet comprehend. And one she wasn’t ready to give up. Not yet.
“You’re awake,” he said sleepily. Turning his face into her stomach, he nuzzled her gently.
Submerged in his warmth and remembered passion, she managed to keep at bay the reticence she knew would eventually catch up with her.
“I’m awake,” she murmured. “I’m not sure if I’m alive, though.”
He chuckled, then snaked a hand across her ribs to coax a rosy nipple to an aroused peak. “You’re alive,” he pronounced, sounding smug and sexy and arrogantly pleased.
She groaned, in awe of his ability to excite her with a touch. “I’m alive,” she agreed breathlessly, trying to ignore the sensations he created as he dipped his tongue into her navel like a hungry bear delving for honey. “But am I well?”
Bracing his hands on either side of her hips, he levered himself up and smiled lazily into her eyes. “You are well. In fact . . .” He lowered his mouth to her breast and bestowed his first morning kiss there. “You are well . . . and good . . . Mmmm . . .” His tongue circled, then swirled across her nipple. “Very, very good.”
“And you are very, very strong.”
He raised his head. Concern darkened his eyes. “Sore?”
This time her smile was smug. “Blissfully.”
“I’m sorry.”
She met his intense gaze, cupping his jaw with her palm. “I’m not. Last night . . .” She paused and had to look away so he wouldn’t see the tears that came from nowhere and threatened to overflow. “Last night was wonderful. I’ve never felt such things. I didn’t know there could be so much . . .” Again her voice trailed off, this time from sheer embarrassment.
“So much what, Jo? So much pleasure?”
Lowering her eyes, she nodded.
“Hey.” He tipped her face to his with a knuckle under her chin. “The pleasure was mine.”
What the night had hidden, the awakening dawn revealed. Despite her struggle to suppress it, uncertainty crept in with the light of day.
“I—I wish I could have been more . . .” She swallowed, unable to say the words.
“More what? More beautiful? Impossible. More responsive? No way.”
“More experienced,” she finally managed, hating the childlike defiance that edged into her voice.
He closed his eyes, drew a deep breath, then leveled her with a look so intense, her heart nearly stopped. “I didn’t need your experience, Joanna. I needed you. And now that I’ve had you, I hate every scummy sonofabitch who touched you before I did and didn’t know what they were giving up when they let you go.”
The vehemence of his statement surprised them both.
Adam pushed himself away from her. He grabbed a piece of wood and shoved it on the fire. It nettled him, this protectiveness he felt for her. He had no right. And he was no better than any other man she’d known. He wasn’t absolved of his sins because he’d told her up front he wasn’t going to stick around for the long haul.
The silence became a lurking presence in the room, overshadowing the uncut purity of the night they had shared. He didn’t know how long he’d stared at the fire before she spoke.
“There was only one,” she said softly.
He snapped his head around and threw her a puzzled look. “One what?”
He’d been a million miles away, Jo realized, thinking thoughts she’d never be privy to, reliving old angers that he might never forgive. It hurt that he’d so easily separated himself from her.
Suddenly angry at a life that gives so sparingly then takes away with such malicious pleasure, she answered him succinctly. “One scummy sonofabitch.”
Whatever reaction she’d expected, it wasn’t what she got. His slow, almost satisfied smile smoothed the briars from her battered ego and made her go all liquid inside. The warmth in his eyes took the hurt away.
“You really do have a nasty mouth, you know that?”
Prompted by the grin on his face and the teasing in his voice, she swung back to the lighthearted mood that had enfolded them when they’d awakened in each other’s arms.
“You really think so?” she asked brightly, as if he’d just praised her with a lavish compliment.
“Yeah.” He rounded on her menacingly. “And if you aren’t going to do something about it, I am.”
He lowered his body onto hers and framed her face with his hands.
“Is this the part where you wash my mouth out with soap?”
He grinned wickedly. “No, ma’am. I have other plans for your sweet little mouth. This is the part where I give up on reforming you and employ other methods of keeping you quiet.”
“Adam—”
“Shut up,” he ordered against her lips, then kissed her gently. When the fun trans
cended quickly into passion, he tried to coax her mouth open with his tongue.
“Problem?” he asked when she didn’t respond to his probing invitation.
“I believe you told me to keep my mouth shut.”
“Ah . . . My mistake.”
She looped her arms around his neck and shifted to accommodate his weight. “It takes a big man to admit his mistakes.”
“And it takes a woman to point them out. Now open for me, Red . . . and the only thing I want to hear out of you for the next hour or so is a moan.”
“Your bath is getting cold,” Adam informed her much later that morning as she stretched and yawned and made a halfhearted effort to break loose of sleep. The lethargy that came from being thoroughly loved had settled in her limbs, coaxing her into a laziness foreign to her nature. The enticement of a hot bath, however, lured her further awake.
She sat up and smiled into the eyes of the only man who had ever kissed her good morning.
“You’re dressed,” she said with a glimmer of dismay that earned her a slow, sexy grin.
Adam sat back on his heels, his gaze caressing her body. “And you’re not,” he replied in a gravelly rasp, wishing that the yearning he saw in her eyes would dull the lingering guilt he felt over stealing her innocence.
The sheet had slipped to her waist and lay hugging her hips. Her hair fell in a tangled skein down her back. One fiery lock ribboned over her shoulder, almost but not quite hiding one rosy nipple. Her breasts were swollen and taut, the pale ivory skin still rouged from the ardor of his loving.
He forced himself to stand up. “And if you want to get dressed sometime today, you’d best rouse yourself, or I’ll be back between those sheets so fast, it’ll make your head spin.”
“Mine’s already spinning.”
She wasn’t a flirt. That much had always been obvious. But this morning, feeling secure in the knowledge of his desire for her, she seemed born to the role. He’d awakened the woman in her last night and he loved watching her revel in the newness and excitement.
She met his eyes with a smoky invitation.
“Have mercy on me, woman.” He laughed and tugged her to her feet. “I’m an old man.”
“A regular old codger,” she said, easing herself into the tub.
She made him feel like a randy young buck. God help him, he wanted her again. But when the hot water reached the delicate flesh of her femininity and she couldn’t hide a wince of pain, he was immediately contrite.
He wouldn’t embarrass her by commenting or apologizing. Instead he gathered her hair in his hands and draped it over the rim of the tub so it wouldn’t get wet as she settled back with a blissful sigh. He knelt down and lathered his hands with the soap, then, indulging in a pleasure of his own, he began to bathe her.
“You have beautiful skin,” he commented as she closed her eyes and relaxed under the smooth glide of his hands.
“I have freckles,” she replied, sounding put out.
He smiled and soaped the length of each arm, enthralled by the delicacy of her fine-boned wrists. “Beautiful skin,” he repeated, careful not to get her bandaged hand wet.
“Chalky white and subject to sunburn and rash.”
He watched his soap-slicked hand caress the satin curve of her shoulder and thought again of the what-ifs that had started formulating sometime in the middle of the night. They’d multiplied rapidly while he’d prepared her bath and let himself watch her sleep. What if things were different? What if he were fifteen, even ten years younger? What if he didn’t have to go back to Detroit to face his demons and settle some scores? What if they could just stay together forever on this island? What if he didn’t have a problem that she had every right to abhor?
Regrets wouldn’t change the facts. There was nothing to be done about what had already passed between them and before they’d met.
When he left her—and he would leave her, he forced himself to acknowledge that with a determination made weak by wanting—at least he would go with the knowledge that he’d convinced her she was a desirable woman.
He needed no such convincing. He became hard as stone when he lowered his hands beneath the surface of the water in search of the soap. She stirred slightly, causing the water to swell around her breasts, hovering near but not covering their rosebud tips.
He raised his hands and began a slow, methodical sudsing. Her eyes opened at the same time his fingers seduced her nipples to erect peaks.
Unable to help himself, he leaned over her. With the tip of his tongue, he caught a runnel of water trickling down her breast, then lingered and licked and sipped.
Her sound of longing brought his head up.
“Well,” he said, sitting back, “I guess that’s enough of that.”
She brushed her fingertips across his cheek. “I don’t think I’ll ever get enough of that.” Embarrassment flooded her face. Averting her eyes, she sank deeper beneath the water.
She looked so small and vulnerable; he was again reminded of her childhood. “How did you lose your mother?”
She hesitated a moment, drew a deep breath that created a gentle ripple, and bent her leg so that the rounded curve of her knee peeked out of the water.
“She died in a car accident.”
Adam watched her carefully for signs of withdrawal. When none came, he urged her with his silence to continue.
“Mama was much younger than Dad. She was twenty-five and he was forty when he married her. Before he met her, he’d never had time for a wife, he’d told everyone. He was married to Shady Point. The resort demanded all of his energy. But then one summer Mama came to the lodge. She was an artist from New York. She’d fallen in love with the lake from some articles she’d read and decided she wanted to spend time painting here. And when she arrived—”
Her faraway smile led Adam to conclude, “She fell in love with your father too.”
She nodded. “She’d only intended to stay a month. Somehow, she never got around to leaving. They married right away and as Daddy used to joke, ‘Nine months and fifteen minutes after the ceremony’ I was born.”
“They didn’t waste any time.”
She smiled again. “Not a minute.”
They were both silent for a while, both thoughtful. “The day Mama died she was on her way home from International Falls. She’d gone to town to do some shopping. On the trip home a semi went out of control and hit her head-on.”
Adam caressed the milky-white knee that rose above the water.
“I was in bed when Daddy came to tell me. It was very dark and very quiet when he woke me up. Even now, I can remember how the room looked shaded in late-night shadows, the light spilling across my bed from the doorway. It’s amazing how sleep can insulate. He was crying, and I remember thinking, Daddy’s playing a joke on me. You know, like parents do sometimes to little kids when they pretend to be sad because you wouldn’t share your sucker, or some silly thing. And I remember thinking, I’m thirteen years old, not a little kid to play this silly game with. . . . Anyway.” The catch in her voice brought an unaccountable tightness to his chest. “He was crying and it didn’t seem real. He lay down beside me and gathered me in his arms and told me Mama was dead. That she wouldn’t ever be coming home again. ‘Baby,’ he said against my hair, ‘I don’t think I can live without her.’ ”
Adam drew in a shaky breath. “He loved her very much.”
“Yes,” she whispered, and skimmed her hand idly across the water. “Very much. He never recovered from losing her.”
“And then he left you too.”
Adam closed his eyes for a long moment. John had loved his wife too much to go on. He’d turned to the bottle and left Joanna to handle the loss all alone. It was no wonder she was so tough. She’d learned early to take it on the chin.
Poor little Jo, he thought, and without a word, helped her out
of the tub. He wrapped her carefully in a flannel blanket and carried her to the chair in front of the fire. His lips pressed to her hair, he held her close against his body and rocked her like a child.
Eight
Adam gave Jo pieces of himself a little at a time after that. At first the revelations came in unguarded moments, often as a response to something she’d said or done. The words slipped out with an ease he didn’t stop to question. He merely let go. For the first time in his life, he let escape what he’d fought to keep locked inside. Sharing himself with her seemed as natural as breathing.
After breakfast, he helped her dress and loaned her his sweatshirt, and they headed outside.
In any season, Lake Kabetogama possessed a beauty that was a celebration of the magnificence of nature and a joy to all five senses. This particular day, the sun heralded the glory of autumn. It rimmed the treetops with gold and silvered the lake with its shimmering reflection. The aroma of evergreen and the pungent, musky scent of decaying leaves perfumed the crisp air.
The lake breeze was gentle. It wove a rustling, musical sound as it filtered through the forest, persuading the birch leaves to ride to the island floor in its wake. Feathering lazily to the ground, the golden disks decorated the rocky path and crackled beneath their feet as they walked to the shore.
It was a day bathed in the same kind of magic that had blanketed their night. The illusion continued. Cocooned in the knowledge that until someone found them, they were lost to the rest of the world, they made the most of the brief suspension of time. They ignored the impending return of reality and found a sweet healing in each other.
Determined to make the best of the sunshine and the still water, Jo, with Adam’s help, scavenged around in the toolshed and came up with some fishing gear. Although the pole had seen better days, she declared it to be serviceable. After a little more digging she found enough tackle to rig the line.
With more persuasion than she thought necessary, she playfully goaded Adam into trying his luck at fishing for their supper.