“I asked you to drop me off at home,” she said at last.
“Get out…please,” Bruce said.
“I’d rather go home.”
“That would take longer than we’ve got tonight,” Bruce said tonelessly.
Donna looked up sharply. His face was in shade. “I didn’t mean I expected you to drive me to Vancouver,” she said. “Laura and Mark’s home is mine while I’m in San Francisco. I simply meant—”
“I know what you meant. I was just reminding you that you do have another home…a very permanent home.”
“I’m not likely to forget. I don’t want to.”
“Watching you tonight, I wondered.”
“Don’t do this, Bruce. You’re angry, and I don’t know why. And I don’t want to get into it tonight, or argue in the street.”
“Then come in, because I’m not driving you anywhere until we talk.”
“Fine.” She slammed the car door. “I’ll walk. It isn’t so far.”
He grabbed her before she’d taken two steps. “You little…you…Donna, Donna.” The arms that held her were rigid, yet they trembled. Bruce averted his face, and she heard his hard breathing. The sensation inside her burned, throbbed. There was something different about him tonight. Vulnerability and violence, passion and fear, barely reined fury—she felt all these emotions in him, and more.
She twisted from his grasp and led the way to the house. On the top step, she waited for him to unlock the door. Then she walked to his study without putting on any lights.
“You know this house as well as I do, don’t you?” Light burst from corner sconces, and Bruce passed her to pull heavy velvet drapes over the French windows.
The room was warm, yet she shivered. She crossed her arms tightly. “You shouldn’t have followed me.”
Bruce came so close that she could see the pulse in his throat, the faint twitch at the corner of his mouth. “What do you want from me?” he asked.
“I’ve already made that very clear.”
He tapped a fist quickly, agitatedly, against his chin. “You made it clear. And you want me to feel the same. But I’m not supposed to worry about you, is that it?”
“There wasn’t anything to worry about tonight. I hoped Mike might be able to give me a different insight into Raymond, that’s all. I haven’t had much success dealing with him so far.”
“You come from different cultures, that’s all.”
“Exactly. And I’m trying to understand those differences. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”
“Unless it’s me.”
She tried to turn away, but he wrenched her back. “Bruce, this is senseless. I didn’t want you to follow me tonight. I was managing perfectly well on my own.” Her throat ached unbearably.
“Ever since you got to San Francisco you’ve been asking me to help you, to stand by you. You’ve made sure you glued me to your side. Now, when I tell you I’ve been worried about you, you tell me to get lost.”
“I haven’t told you to get lost, damn it. I’d never tell you to get lost. I love you, Bruce. But I don’t want another father figure. I don’t want you treating me like a juvenile with a curfew.”
His face contorted, and he gritted his teeth. “Decide, will you? Loving means commitment, caring, all the time. Don’t you understand that? Grow up, Donna, grow up, will you?”
She tried to breathe, and couldn’t. Tears, tears of pure rage sprang to her eyes. “You ever say that to me again and I’ll…” Words failed her. She held his arms, drove her fingers into his biceps, tried to shake him. “I’m grown up, Bruce, very grown up.”
“Are you?” He bowed his head, then looked into her eyes. “Are you grown up? You know something, ma’am, I love you, too. How does that grab you? You made it happen. I fell in love with you, God help us both. Can you cope with that?”
Donna opened her mouth to answer, and he immediately brought his lips down on hers, opened them wider, drove his tongue into her mouth. His arms went around her body, trapping her arms at her sides. Heat from his hands seared her flesh through her cotton blouse.
She couldn’t move. Her eyes were wide open, watching his tightly closed lids, the flickering of his thick, bleached lashes. Finally he lifted his head, but he continued to hold her. She saw tears in his eyes, a bitter downward twist of his mouth. Now the sensation in her belly was recognizable—longing, and fear, and insecurity.
He kissed her again, and again, and she tried to respond. When he moved his hands over her back, her bottom, slid them up to massage the sides of her breasts, she tried not to think. Feel, she told herself, standing on tiptoe to clasp his neck, to stroke his ears with her thumbs. Feel.
He drew away abruptly, held her face against his chest. She felt the rapid beat of his heart and his quickened breathing. “Tell me to stop, Donna,” he whispered. “Just say no, and I’ll take you home.”
“I don’t want to go home,” she said, and her voice sounded like a stranger’s.
“You know what’s going to happen if you don’t?”
Fluttering nerves jumped around her ribs, shivered in her limbs. “I know. Will you let me stay?”
The noise he made was a muffled groan. “My love,” he said, “my love. I’m the one who should be strong enough to stop this, but I’m not.” He stroked back her hair, bit the lobe of her ear gently, and lifted her into his arms. At the foot of the stairs, he paused. “It’ll never be the same, Donna.” She sensed the sadness that wrestled with his ardor.
“I love you.” There was nothing else to be said. She slipped a hand inside his shirt, over the hair-rough surface of his chest. “We can’t go back, Bruce and it’s already too late to try.”
Beneath her fingers, his flat nipple tensed. A muscle in his jaw jerked, and he carried her upstairs. He kicked open the double doors to a large bedroom that was really two rooms, converted into a suite, a bedroom and a sitting room. A satin-shaded lamp glowed on a round table by one window. Blues, midnight, navy, dusky gray-blue, predominated. Piles of cushions littered a mahogany four-poster bed.
Bruce set her down on deep-piled carpet. He ran his palms up and down her arms, bent to kiss her neck, touched his tongue to the corner of her mouth. She stilled his head, held him away from her, and smiled gently.
While she felt him watch her every move, she closed the doors, then lowered the Austrian shades over the windows.
She kicked off her sandals and returned to stand in front of him. He shook his head. “You don’t have to do this. I—”
She pressed her fingers to his mouth. With her other hand, she unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it free of his jeans. “Sometimes,” she said as she reached to kiss him lightly, “you talk too much.” She kissed him again while she pushed the shirt from his shoulders. “Have I ever told you that?” The shirt fell to the rug and she concentrated on his belt.
He stopped her.
Donna looked up into his face and pressed her lips together. His eyes were different, dark. He walked her backward until she sat on the edge of the bed. Slowly, he sank to his knees. When his face was on a level with hers, he kissed her, carefully at first, then so hard he forced her back on the bed and rose slightly to lean over her. His weight pleased her, and made it hard for her to breathe. His hands were in her hair, caressing her throat, smoothing her shoulders, moving to her waist, driving that new, burning sensation higher, making it sharper.
When he sat back on his heels, pulling her up, she felt disoriented. He looked at her face only once more before he unbuttoned her blouse, quickly, without fumbling, and parted the front. She wore no bra. Heat rushed over her skin. Her breasts were small. Would she please him?
“You are a lovely woman, Donna.” His voice broke. He rubbed his fingers up and down her ribs, across her collarbones, circling her breasts slowly, coming close to her nipples but not quite touching them. She arched toward him slightly, confused. She wanted him to touch her there—everywhere. A little cry came unbidden from her throat.
; “Do you know what you want me to do, Donna? Is it still all right? You don’t want me to stop?”
She tried to speak. Only a moan was audible. She leaned forward and pulled his face to rest between her breasts, moved slowly until he gripped her, rubbed the slight roughness of his cheek over first one nipple, then the other, and followed with gently nipping, sucking kisses.
Breath rushed from her lungs, and strength from her body. She allowed her head to hang back. He stroked her thighs, slipped a hand upward to her groin, and the piercing heat in her breasts flared and the heaviness in her womb pulsed. The heel of his hand rotated against her pelvis, and she clutched his naked shoulders, shuddering. He pressed harder, repeatedly. Her skirt worked up over her hips. Bruce slipped off her panties, kissed her belly and down, down where his hand had started the raw, sweet pain. When the gnawing need came again, she knew she couldn’t bear him to stop. She didn’t understand, but she didn’t care. This was Bruce and this was right. Then the pain she wanted to go on and on was gone and her body was a wonderful thing she’d never fully known before.
“Are you all right?” Bruce’s voice was faint and far away.
“Yes,” she whispered. “But…but…”
“Shhh. Come on, sweet.” He took off her skirt, threw back the covers on the bed, and lifted her onto the sheets.
“Bruce. Don’t go away.” She held her arms toward him.
His laugh was mirthless. “I’m not going anywhere.” He shed the rest of his clothes. She swallowed. He was a perfectly made man: very tall, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, well muscled but slim. His long legs, tanned from days on the boat, held her attention. They were good, strong legs, already showing the effects of running. His chest was tanned as well as his back, his arms, his whole body in fact, except the skin that had been covered by his shorts or his swimsuit. Donna glanced away. She had always wanted this moment of discovery to be with Bruce. She had to be what he needed in a woman.
Bruce stretched out beside her and began a slow, rhythmic stroking of her body. Again he avoided her breasts until she looked into his eyes and saw his intense concentration. He was preparing her—and himself. And he, too, was a little afraid. She didn’t want Bruce to worry about her. She made herself lie very still.
When he kissed her, control fled. She strained against him, turning sideways to meet his aroused body. They kissed until they drew apart a few inches, gasping.
Gently, Bruce eased her onto her back and began a measured kissing campaign that covered her body. This time he left no part untouched, and when she cried out, reaching to hold his sweat-slick shoulders, he parted her legs with a knee and eased himself over her.
In his face she saw passion mingle with struggle. He entered her carefully, his weight still supported on his elbows, still watching her eyes. “Okay, sweetheart?” he said very softly. “Okay?”
Donna turned her head away. She didn’t want him to treat her like porcelain. “Make love to me, Bruce,” she said, sobbing out her desire for him. “Please. I want you.”
And he did make love to her, part wild love, part gentle, hesitant love, and eventually love that couldn’t be stemmed by control. Donna smothered a cry at the one small pain she felt, then met each thrust with the rise of her hips. When Bruce rolled onto his back, taking her with him, his legs clamping her body to his, she laughed, tipped back her head and laughed, braced her hands on his chest and bent to brush his face with her hair.
“Oh, you are something, my love. You are really something,” Bruce said, and he cupped her breasts. “You are probably addictive.”
“I most certainly am,” she assured him, shifting until he gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut.
Then he was on top of her again, his eyes glazed, his body gleaming, and she couldn’t talk anymore. A burst of energy drove her against him, and he met her again and again. Heat—intense, unbearable, essential, swept into her and came, sharper and sharper, and Bruce yelled, something she didn’t hear clearly yet understood perfectly, and she answered in kind. He arched his spine once, twice, and fell over her, gathered her into his arms.
Later, she didn’t know how much later, he pulled a sheet over them and they lay, facing each other, legs entwined, embracing tightly. Sleep came while she tasted the salt on his skin, felt the hair on his chest against her cheek.
Bruce drowsed. He didn’t want to let her go, ever. Each time he opened his eyes, he peered down at her face, held his hand a scant distance above her face, her hair, longing to wake her but wanting her to sleep. She had given him all of herself. God, he hoped he’d done the right thing. He hoped he’d do what was right from here on, for both of them. He stroked her back lightly from her shoulder to the dip at her small waist, over her firm, rounded hip.
“I’m awake too.”
He’d turned off the light. Now he put a knuckle beneath her chin and tilted up her face. In the darkness, he saw the shine of her eyes, the vague glint of her teeth as she smiled at him.
They made love again. Afterward, Bruce lay on his back, Donna’s diminutive body stretched on top of him, and passed a hand repeatedly over her hair, trying to formulate what to say next.
“I love you,” Donna whispered, snuggling her face into the hollow of his shoulder.
“And I love you,” he said, a hard little place forming in the pit of his stomach. “Now.” He said it, and felt her stiffen sharply.
When she didn’t answer, he pressed on. “I can’t imagine ever feeling different than I feel right now, but I want us to be sure. And I want you to be all you can be. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“No,” she said in a small voice, and jerked away from his arms and sat on the edge of the bed.
Bruce scooted behind her, put an arm around her waist and covered her breast. “We love each other now, Donna. I think marriage is probably where we’re headed. But we can’t risk a mistake.”
“You sound so reasonable, and so cold.”
He kissed her back and smiled wryly at the ripple that passed along her muscles. “I’m not either of those things just now. I’m holding on to logic by a hair. Donna. Sweetheart. Will you go back to Vancouver at the end of the summer and go to school like your folks want you to? And then, if we both feel the same after we’ve been apart a while, we’ll know we belong together.”
She began to cry softly. “I don’t know if I can do it.”
Swallowing caused a pain in his throat. He withdrew his arm and lay on his stomach. “Neither do I, darling. But I think we’d better give it a try if we hope to start off on the right foot. And I think your folks will find…us…us easier to accept if they see we aren’t rushing into anything.”
Donna was cold, so cold, and the tears she cried felt as if they were wrenched from deep inside her. “How long will it be before you…before we know if we can be together?”
“I don’t know yet. We’ve got to give ourselves as long as it takes.”
“What if…what if only one of us decides…” She couldn’t go on.
“Don’t, Donna, love. Please don’t. Trust it’ll all be all right. Sweetheart, sex that really works between two people is wonderful. And it sure works between us. But the couple that has it all is the couple that has love and sex and friendship in common. We need a little space and time to be sure we can have all those things. If what we feel now fades, then…well, will you do this my way? Donna, I’ve been around a while. I think I know how I feel about you, but—good God—you’re only nineteen. I’ve got to give you a chance to…to…Please, Donna, will you go along with this?”
“You really mean,” Donna said in a small voice, “that you want me to go back to Vancouver at the end of summer? But what on earth would I do in Vancouver?” Disbelief weighted her words, and tears continued to roll down her cheeks.
Bruce fumbled for the edge of the sheet and blotted at the tears. “School, Donna. You have to give it a chance. You—”
“Oh, Bruce, no,” she moaned.
“Oh yes
, my love. You’ve said, a number of times, that some day you’d work with young gymnasts. That will take formal training. You have to begin. And you’ll be good at it, Donna. You have no idea how good you can be. You have a gift for it. Look, anybody who can get me out in the park in running shoes…” His words dwindled, and he hugged her close. “Please, Donna. Do it for me?” His voice was unsteady.
There was no choice, then, Donna thought helplessly. There was nothing she would not do for Bruce, for both of them.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Okay.”
“Good girl.”
“Yes,” she said, getting up and putting on the light. “I’ll go to school and we’ll see.” The smile she tried to form didn’t quite come off.
Bruce sat up and reached for her hand. He pulled her down beside him. “Can we make a promise to each other? Can we promise that if, by the end of your first quarter, we’re both sure marriage is what we want, we’ll get married and you’ll finish school down here?” His blue eyes were almost navy in the half-light. His face was drawn. He did want the best for both of them, and he was hurting, too.
“I promise,” she said, and pushed him against the pillows. She kissed him softly. “We’ll wait and see. But, Bruce, while I’m still in San Francisco, we can see each other, can’t we?”
He caught her hand and kissed each finger. “Try and keep me away,” he said. “But we’d better avoid…well, I’m only human, and if I’m going to keep my head together I can’t…”
She kissed him into silence. “Neither can I. So we’ll go back to dinners at Fisherman’s Wharf. Okay?”
He laughed, but stopped abruptly when the phone rang.
Donna glanced at the clock on his bedside table. “Oh, no, Bruce. Look at the time. It’s one in the morning. You don’t suppose that’s Laura looking for me?”
“I hope to hell not.” Bruce lifted the receiver. “Fenton.”
Donna watched while he listened. Three times he said yes, nothing more, then replaced the phone.
“Well?” she said, as he stared broodingly into space.
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