And a little at a time, she responded. The sobs died away; she blew her nose; her voice came back—clogged, then watery to be sure, but usable. She participated in the conversation.
She didn’t tell him why the tears. He guessed she couldn’t have even if she was willing. And Nat was surprised to discover he didn’t need her to, surprised to learn that understanding her emotion didn’t necessarily mean being able to explain it. Surprised to find that it was enough to have her talk to him about nothing and anything merely to have her voice here with him where he lay propped up by pillows piled against the headboard of their bed.
Surprised to chance upon the astonishingly seductive value of the simple discussion of normal seasonal things, like conspiring over what to get the kids for Christmas; how to get away Christmas shopping and sneak the gifts into the house without them being the wiser; how to inveigle the grieving, cynical, too–old–for–his–years Zach into having to guess about the reality of Father Christmas’s existence for one more year.
They made love to each other on the phone—teasing and raunchy. Lewd and titillating. Tenderly and with mounting passion. And finally with frustration, as well as anticipation of what could pass between them when Helen got home.
A lot of anticipation.
Then they held each other quietly, as only lovers could, through an open phone line until drowsiness and the comfort of each other’s felt presence allowed them to hang up and go to sleep.
Alone.
Chapter Eleven
~FINNISH INDEPENDENCE DAY AND FEAST OF ST. NICHOLAS~
Toby let him know the minute he heard her car at the top of Ottawa Street, and Nat met her at the back door when she arrived home before dawn December sixth.
His hands were everywhere, unbuttoning her coat, her uniform jacket, yanking at her tie, her blouse.
"I missed you" was the first thing she said when he took his tongue out of her mouth long enough for her to say anything.
"Come to bed" was his fervent response.
"Nat…!" Laughing, giddy, gasping. "Let me get in the house. My stuff—"
"Will keep," Nat muttered, tipping her head so he could access her throat with teeth, lips and tongue. "Right now you’ve got a real medical emergency on your hands in the shape of a newlywed husband who’s been married nine days and hasn’t made love to his wife except by phone in four and who may explode from pent up frustration if he doesn’t get to soon."
"Oh, my, you poor thing," Helen responded with mock concern. "Are you in pain?"
Nat came back to her mouth, voracious. "More than you’ll ever know."
"I wouldn’t be too sure about that," she murmured, and brought her mouth to his in a long, searing, emotion–filled kiss that poured her soul into him and asked for nothing in return.
Stunned and off–balanced, Nat held her away when they finally came up for air, explored her face with sensitive fingertips, seeking expression and understanding.
"Helen?" he asked uncertainly.
She shook her head, smiling crookedly against his fingers, planting a dry kiss in his palm.
"I missed you," she offered softly. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the whole truth, either. "All of you—kids, Toby… You. It’s been a long week without you. Without this."
She laid a palm on his cheek, slipped her tongue along the seam of his lips, kissing him tenderly and with such longing that the need came crashing into him more immutable than before. It tightened in his belly and churned through his lungs in waves bent on drowning him. But this time there was something more endemic mixed with the need, something raw and unconditional, fragile and insidious that didn’t feel like it was going away anytime soon.
He wanted to take his time, to love her slowly and for a long time, love her fully and completely, and when he was done, start over and do it again and again.
And again.
Wanted to be waiting for her every time she came home, holding the door open wide to let her in. Locking it behind her for as long as she could stay. Holding on to her with his hands wide open and his heart available and welcoming.
What he wanted scared the hell out of him.
What he needed terrified him even more.
He broke the kiss, breath jarring in his lungs, and leaned his forehead on Helen’s for a moment, gathering himself back together.
"Whoa, baby," Helen murmured hoarsely. "That was a little more revealing than I intended."
"No kidding," Nat rasped. "For me, too."
"You don’t want to talk about it, do you?" She was anxious not to.
"Not right now." He shuddered theatrically, an imitation of the Cowardly Lion. "Not on your life, maybe later. Maybe never."
"Oh good." Helen heaved a tremulous sigh of relief. "I was hoping you’d say that. Because all I really want to do right now is crawl into bed and have my way with you and vice versa and not think about anything for a long time."
His smile was slow and prurient, monumentally indecent. His kiss was deep and thorough, filled with smoke and flame and heavenly sin. His voice was a rumble, shivering down her spine, curling her toes. "I can do that."
He bent to retrieve her briefcase and overnight bag from where he’d dumped them out of her hands when she came in. She collected her uniform bag before he fell over it on the kitchen steps. Together they went through the house and mounted the stairs to the second floor.
"Did the kids polish their shoes and set them outside their doors for St. Nicholas?" Helen whispered as they went.
Nat nodded. "Yup. You get the stuff we talked about?"
"Mmm–hmm. In my bag. A baby woolly mammoth for Jane, a Madagascar watch for Max, red licorice for Libby, a bunch of bright scrunchies for Cara and Mindstorm Legos for Zach. Wait, I’ll find ’em and we can put ’em out on our way to bed…."
* * *
His skin was sweeter than she remembered, saltier, more planed and ridged with muscles. His hair was thick corn silk ruffled into damp waves by her hands, wet from the heat of the moment and his sweat–slick skin. His body was hard, firm, a haven of security. She wanted to taste all of him, hold the flavor on her tongue, breathe him into her lungs, savor him. Keep him there.
Her skin was more satiny under his lips than his memory had let him believe, more responsive, her breasts were more sensitive and full, her body more restless, the silk of her thighs more inviting. Her scent was saturated with passion, fragrant and heady, earthy and drugging. He couldn’t get enough of her.
He followed her into the bedroom from the hallway, set her cases quietly aside, locked the door and listened to the sough of her garment bag as she tossed it into the chair across the room. Waited for her to come back to him so he didn’t have to go stumbling around to find her.
She turned on a light because she wanted to see him, watched the dilatory, purely masculine grin cross his face when he deciphered the switch click.
"I want to see you," she told him, approaching to slide her palms over his chest, down his stomach, under the ragged hem of his cutoff sweatshirt. They lingered on his belly. "I need to make sure you’re not just the dream I’ve been having the last few nights."
"That’s cheating," he said severely, but his face told a different story—that he enjoyed having her eyes on him as much as he did her hands. He caught the left one before she could dip her fingers into his waistband, brought it to his mouth and kissed her ring, turned her hand over and drew a moth–light, nerve tingling circle in the center of her palm with his tongue. "I’m real, Helen. There’s no rush."
A sigh. "Nat…"
"Shh. Stand still. I want to undress you. I’ve spent the last four nights with this fantasy…."
His hands went to her blouse buttons, slid them one by one from their buttonholes; fingers dusted up under the cotton, along the smoothness of her shoulders, peeled the blouse away. Glided back over the tops of her breasts to the edge of the lace and Lycra teddy covering them. Drifted down around the full, curved sides to spread and span underneath,
shaping and lifting.
"So," he murmured, "Colonel Crockett wears sexy undies under her khakis, does she?"
Helen sucked in a breath at the flick of his thumbs across her nipples, and her chest swelled toward him. "I spent this week with my own fantasies."
"Mmm. Did they go anything like this?"
He dipped his head until his lips nuzzled the tight pearl his thumbs had created; she arched a bit, lifting it to him.
He rolled his tongue lazily around it; she shut her eyes and her breath snagged slightly.
He worried the bead gently between his teeth; she moaned and tried to raise herself closer.
He lipped his creation like some luscious fruit, and the chafe of lace and moisture over the delicate skin was both sensual and erotic. To him, to her. She whimpered and tethered him to her with her fingers in his hair, fever rising.
He drew the source of his nourishment, lace and all, suddenly hard and deep into his mouth; she gasped, crying out, feeling the flame.
He suckled, and the lash of his tongue, the force of his hunger was more urgent, more insistent than her memory of four days ago. More loving.
She began to smolder and pant, to clutch at him, holding him to her while her legs threatened to weaken and give way. The way her heart already had.
"Nat, please…"
Smiling, he tightened an arm about her waist, supporting her, and wetted her other breast, fastened his mouth over her nipple to savor and venerate and feed. Nimble fingers spread over her hip, hiked her against his arousal; tugged at the zipper of her skirt, shoved the garment down her legs, hoisted her out of it and kicked it out of the way.
Nothing between them but his ill–concealing gym shorts, the thin, tantalizing chafe of the lace and the thigh–high silk, garterless stockings she wore.
Which he wasn’t yet aware of.
His hand wandered down her thigh, hooked in stocking elastic. Paused. Contracted. His lungs seized and he wasn’t in charge of them or anything anymore; his breath shuddered out of him, guttural and heavy.
Desperate.
He raised his head and his heart thudded wildly against hers. This wasn’t the same Helen who did his laundry creatively, treated all their children firmly with love, couldn’t follow a dinner recipe if her life depended on it, contested practically everything and likened his differences with Zach to a no–holds–barred, visually impaired game of Horse. Not the one who polished her brass and did her job better than anyone else in order to compete with men and keep and better her distinction in a largely man’s world.
It wasn’t, he realized, even the same Helen who’d given herself to him the first time amid piles of laundry and the rumble of the washing machine, the one who’d waited for him naked last Sunday night, who’d let the kids wait a few minutes in order to shower with him Monday morning. This was a woman making a statement without words, a woman who’d taken the time to make herself secretly and completely feminine before she returned to the man—her husband—who wanted her any way and anywhere he could have her. A husband who didn’t need her to dress for him at all, but who found he liked that she had immensely.
A woman who, through necessity and habit, normally kept her own counsel—but who’d come home to offer a gift and share her secrets with him.
His breathing was erratic, his voice tight and filled with wonder. "You did come home to seduce me, didn’t you?"
"Do you like ’em?"
"Yeah." Ragged and nearly undone. "Oh, yeah."
"I didn’t know if you would. I wasn’t sure if I would, but I saw ’em in this lingerie shop when I was out getting stuff for the kids and I didn’t have a St. Nicholas present for you and I just—I just…" He felt her blush suffuse her chest. She swallowed. "I couldn’t stop thinking about wearing them with you. I’ve never done anything like this before, never imagined… It felt weird going in to buy them and this teddy, like I was letting the whole world in on some sort of depraved secret I didn’t even know I had, and that anybody who saw the bag would know the state I was in and what I wanted to do with you right there in the dressing room when I was trying this stuff on, and I felt so hot and—and wicked, so I hid the bag inside a grocery bag so nobody could see it when I got back to the base, and it was just my secret and…" She was nervous. Uncertain. Vulnerable. "And I—I’m babbling, aren’t I, but are you sure you like ’em?" Her hand moved to the top of one stocking. "I could take ’em off—"
Before she could finish speaking, he captured her hand and sandwiched it tight against his belly between them, tangled his fingers in her hair and silenced her with his lips, his tongue, scorching, burning, branding her mouth with his. Backed her up to drop her on the bed. Loomed over her, dangerous and uncivilized. Achingly tender.
"They’re part of my present," he told her fiercely. "When I want it unwrapped, I’ll finish the unwrapping. Until then, leave ’em alone, okay?"
She nodded. "Okay," she said in a small voice. Then added inquisitively, "Nat?"
"Yeah?"
She sat up, and her hands slipped under his sweatshirt, pushing it up. Her voice was unsteady. "If you’re not ready to unwrap me, would it be all right if I at least unwrap you?"
He shut his eyes and swallowed convulsively. "Yeah."
So she did. Rose and slid her hands up inside his sweatshirt, peeling it slowly off his torso, over his head and arms, discarding it. Then she ran her mouth down him, open and wet, tasting him everywhere the way she’d spent the last several nights wanting to in her dreams. His chest, his back, shoulders, around his sides. Stooping to sample his belly while her fingers snared in his waistband. Kneeling to work his shorts over his hips and down his legs, bathing the trail after them with loitering kisses while his breath went from erratic to harsh and capricious, almost strangling. When she took him in her mouth he was lost.
"Hel–en."
He moved to draw her away, instead found his hands tangling in her hair while his craven body bowed into the sweet torture she wreaked upon him. In the instant before he lost sanity completely, he caught her shoulders and pulled her up his length, mated his mouth to hers.
Breathless, she laughed, joyous, intimate; brought the madness crashing down on him.
Impatient, he stripped the body–hugging lace off her shoulders, skinned it off her breasts and belly, her thighs and legs. Moved to claim every square inch he exposed, imprint his territory in an act as carnal as it was timeless.
As it was loving.
Wild to possess her, he still took his time, found every nerve she had and brought it zinging to life. Her insteps and inner thighs were particularly sensitive; he stroked and nipped and bent to her as she had to him.
"Na–at. Na–tha–niel!"
When she was as wild and mindless as she’d left him, he didn’t stop, merely tucked his hands under her thighs and lifted her closer to his mouth, applied lips, tongue and teeth with greater diligence until she was bowing up off the bed, pleading. Frantic and abandoned, flying from the peak he’d pushed her to into the heavens.
He joined them while she was still in flight, impelling her higher than she knew she could go, surging and stroking, stoking a fire hotter than it seemed possible to come out of alive. And then he was the fire and the phoenix, burning with her, flaming out and rising up from the ashes, destroying and rescuing her all at the same time.
She held on and went where he took her, no longer a separate piece of the universe but a piece of him, as he was of her: one heart, one body, one soul.
Just like the marriage vows said.
* * *
Did he know she loved him? she wondered, throat tight, watching him across the breakfast table, through the buzz of children’s greetings and needs and seasonal enthusiasms. Know love was what had given her the courage to buy that indecent bit of lace, the stockings he hadn’t taken off of her until just before this morning’s shower? Did he understand what she’d learned about herself since Monday, comprehend the lessons in true human depravity and the underbe
lly of loyalty she’d been forced and sickened to study while unraveling the jumble of threads binding the representative’s son?
Did he know how special he was as a father and a man, but especially as a husband? Did he see what she’d been taught by him and by men who from their beginnings had never been, could never be anything like him? Did he realize how badly his passion and decency frightened her, how terrified she was of loving him the way she knew she did? Would he understand the things she might never be able to bring herself to say?
Would he stay with her as John hadn’t when the other side of her life, her career, her ambitions got in the way? And when he left, would he, too, find a judge who’d let him take the children with him?
He passed behind her, pressing close, reaching to grab the milk Jane was directing him to on the counter. His free hand skated lightly down Helen’s back and over her rump, his throat loosed a low, satisfied growl of "Hiya, gorgeous, miss me?" when he leaned in to nip her ear.
When she slapped his wandering hand off her hip and shook the pancake spatula at him, "Behave," he gave her a smug, unrepentant, pleased–with–himself grin and a lecherous "I don’t want to," and went to pour Jane’s milk. Helen wanted to smack him—or love him silly.
Or both.
She turned to set a plate of pancakes on the table in front of Zach, found him watching her and Nat with haunted, wary eyes. Before she could decide how to handle the situation, Zach took the pancakes and turned away, shifting sideways to snatch the syrup out of Libby’s hand.
"Hey," she said and snatched it back.
The two of them battled about one thing and another until Helen dropped them off at school, and she didn’t have a chance to try to figure out what Nat’s son had been feeling. Or to ask him about it. But she had the strange sensation that somewhere deep in their eleven–year–old’s aching, terrified heart, Zach was fighting hope.
* * *
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