by Gayle Wilson
“Is she here?”
“Not yet. She’s picking up dinner. You want to wait?”
He didn’t invite her to join them for the meal. It wasn’t that he objected to the idea. He just figured that since she was Lindsey’s friend, she should issue any invitations.
“No, that’s all right. Give her a message for me?”
“Of course.”
“Tell her I’ve decided to take her advice. I just need to check something out first.”
“She’ll know what that means?”
Shannon smiled. “She’ll figure it out.”
Lindsey had said she was leaving Shannon’s when she called him. This must be something related to the conversation there. If so, the cryptic message would probably be clear to her.
“You got it,” he agreed.
“Thanks.”
“Sure you don’t want to wait?”
“No, I’m gonna go before you shrink the carpet.”
“Look, you’re welcome to stay. I didn’t mean to be inhospitable. I just wasn’t expecting company.”
“Other than Lindsey. Or isn’t she company anymore?”
He didn’t answer, simply holding her eyes.
“Okay, forget I said that,” Shannon said, looking a little embarrassed that her teasing had fallen so flat. “I apologize. It’s been a really bad day.”
He nodded. The air conditioner, set low because of the heat outside, chilled his wet skin. He didn’t give a damn whether Lindsey’s friend stayed or went. He just wanted her to make up her mind.
“I’ll let you get back to your shower. Just give Lindsey my message, please.”
This time she turned and disappeared into the darkness of the hallway. Jace wondered if Lindsey was going to be pissed he’d let her leave. He stepped into the doorway to call her back, but Shannon had already rounded the corner.
He closed the door, and from force of habit, turned the dead bolt and secured the chain. He hadn’t yet given Lindsey a key, so he’d have to let her in.
Maybe the drive-through she’d chosen would be as slow as those places normally were. If he was lucky, by the time she got here, he’d have finished his interrupted shower. And if he hadn’t, maybe he could talk her into finishing it with him.
Lindsey juggled her purse and the two heavy sacks she carried so that she could free one finger to stab the doorbell. Reaction had finally set in as she’d climbed the stairs to Jace’s apartment.
This afternoon’s adrenaline had faded, leaving her feeling as if she’d been run over by a truck. On top of that, she’d skipped lunch, hoping to find Shannon in the lounge. And the sense of camaraderie she’d felt at Shannon’s had long ago evaporated. Everything, the emotional as well as the physical, seemed to be catching up with her. Fighting inertia so intense it felt like illness, she lifted her arm and punched the button again.
“Coming.”
Her heart lifted just to hear Jace’s voice. Which sounded remarkably normal. But then he was a professional, long accustomed to the kind of violent death she’d encountered for the first time this afternoon.
She listened to locks being manipulated before the door swung inward. Jace was wearing threadbare jeans and a faded navy polo, both of which emphasized the strength of his body.
“Hey,” she said, her eyes drinking in the sight of him.
He leaned forward to relieve her of the sacks. At the same time his lips brushed the side of her cheek. As kisses went, it wasn’t much. The kind people in the South gave all the time in greeting or in saying goodbye.
Tonight it said welcome home. And after her screw up on the phone, that was something she had very much needed to hear.
“Hey, yourself. Smells good.” Jace turned and started toward the kitchen.
She hovered in the doorway, too emotional to make small talk about the food. When he reached the door on the other side of the room, Jace realized she hadn’t followed him. He turned back, his expression quizzical. “Is there something else?”
He meant more food. Maybe out in the car. She shook her head and stepped inside.
“Lock it,” he ordered.
She took the opportunity to try to gather control. Once the chain was in place, she turned and found him watching her. She managed a smile.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked
“We had this conversation.”
“That was a while ago.”
“So if anything, I should be better, right? Not worse.”
“It doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes it takes a while for things to sink in. Want a drink?”
She shook her head. “I’d probably pass out.”
“You can do that, too, if you want, but you ought to eat something first.”
She nodded, reluctantly moving toward him. He didn’t turn and go on into the kitchen as she’d expected. Instead his eyes examined her as they had at the school this afternoon.
With that memory she was suddenly back in that classroom with that limp, lifeless body swaying in the draft from the air conditioner. Sickness curled in the pit of her stomach, so strong she was forced to swallow against it.
“Did you find out about the note?” she asked.
“Yeah. No mystery there. Harrison left it for you. He just wanted to clear the air. He said—”
“What?” Whatever else Walt had said, Jace clearly didn’t want to tell her. She could see the regret that he’d started this in his eyes, but she needed to know. If it would make sense of any of this…
“Tell me, Jace. Tell me what he said.”
“That you were Tim’s favorite teacher. He didn’t want—”
She didn’t know what her face revealed, but Jace reacted to it immediately. He set the bags on the hall table and opened his arms. That was the only invitation she needed. She walked into them as if that were the most natural thing in the world. As if she belonged there.
He smelled of soap and deodorant and shampoo. Clean. Alive. Normal. She took a deep breath, savoring the smell. Savoring the feel of soft knit under her cheek and the strength of his arms. Willing the other images in her head to disappear.
“Don’t think about it,” he said.
“How do you do that?”
“You just don’t think about it. You concentrate on something else. Something good.”
So, is he any good?
Think about something good. Something like Jace.
“Easier said than done.” She didn’t move her head from his chest. She felt as if she never wanted to move again.
“But it is possible. I promise.”
“Help me,” she whispered.
She felt his chin brush against the top of her head as he nodded. Having his arms around her was therapeutic. Feeling the solid warmth of his body against hers—
“You hungry?”
She shook her head. She knew she ought to eat, but she was unwilling to give up the security of having him hold her for food. She couldn’t think of anything right now that was more important or more tempting than to be in his embrace.
“I know you’re emotional right now. And vulnerable. I don’t want to take advantage of that. You need to say if—”
“Take advantage? Like…Do you mean what I think you do?”
“I’m thinking of a time-tested way to make sure you don’t have to think. Not about anything.”
Something devoutly to be wished for right now. She pushed slightly away from him, keeping her palms against his chest so that she could look up into his eyes.
“I don’t want to think, Jace. Not about anything.”
“Good. Because neither do I.”
Jace lifted his torso, propping himself on his forearms. She could hear his breathing, ragged from the strength of his climax. She was reluctant to open her eyes, afraid the oblivion he had promised—and had delivered—would vanish if she did.
Tonight had been nothing like the other times they’d made love. There had been no preliminaries. No foreplay. No courtship. Jace had sim
ply taken her, his lovemaking hard and fast and controlling. And she knew now, though she hadn’t at the start, that this had been exactly what she needed.
“You asleep?”
She opened her eyes to find him looking down into her face. Their bodies were still joined, their skins wet with sweat.
“No, but give me a minute.”
She could feel his heart rate beginning to slow. The frantic pulse of hers was also returning to normal. She closed her eyes again, blowing upward a breath that stirred the damp, disordered hair on her brow.
What had just happened had been beyond the scope of her experience. A little rough. Almost painful. And her reaction had surprised her almost as much as his total dominance. She would never have thought she’d be the kind of woman who would respond to that. The kind who could respond to it.
“You need to eat something.”
“Before I pass out?” She suspected the light-headedness had little to do with food deprivation. Lack of oxygen, maybe. Or multiple orgasms.
He bent, pressing a kiss against her forehead. She opened her eyes again, finding his face still next to hers, their noses almost touching.
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For coming here tonight. For this. For trusting me.”
She did trust him, she realized. If this had been anyone but Jace…“You were right. So…thank you.”
“Right about what?”
“It was consuming.” There had not been one second when she had had to think about anything other than what was happening between them.
“I told you.”
She nodded, wondering what they did for an encore. After all, there were physical limits to how long they could sustain this method of forgetfulness.
“Don’t.” He lowered his head so that his lips found the soft skin beneath her ear.
“Don’t what?”
“Think.” He whispered the word, his mouth moving upward until his tongue dipped into her ear.
Something hot and heavy moved low in her belly. As incredible as it seemed, given the number of times she’d climaxed, her body was once more responding.
“It’s too soon.” She hadn’t intended to voice that realization aloud. Because, of course, the physiological restraints were not hers.
“Speak for yourself.”
The breath needed to whisper those words stirred against the moisture his tongue had left on her ear. Sensation, pure and sexual, moved along all the sensitized nerve pathways of her lower body. Without any conscious direction on her part, her muscles began to tighten around his erection. Incredibly, he responded, making a mockery of her declaration.
Once more his hips began to move, the silken slide of flesh against flesh eased by their previous lovemaking. Despite that, she could feel the now so-familiar sensations beginning to build. She strained upward, her hips lifting into the downward thrust of his, trying to deepen his penetration.
She wanted all of him. As much as she could take. As much as he could give.
Jace lowered his chest so that muscle flattened her breasts. That sensation shivered erotically along overstimulated nerves. Her breath quickened as heat, molten, fluid, began to spread from her core throughout every part of her body.
Jace rocked above her, need fueling his driving tempo. She responded to each stroke with an exhalation, her breath sighing out of her lungs in increasingly short gasps.
And then, after a long time, her growing response became sound. Harsh. Wordless. Mindless.
An unbearable tension grew inside, screaming for release. “Too soon” echoed in her head, but this time in response to her own desire. She wanted…She wanted…
Her mouth opened, trying to express a need that seemed too cruel. Too demanding.
Then, without warning, she forgot to breathe. Forgot to seek. Forgot even what she’d been straining to achieve. Wave after wave of spiraling, cascading pleasure—dark and primitive and aching—flooded all her emptiness.
She was aware on some level that Jace still moved above her, but for an instant—an eternity—she was all alone. Removed from time and place. Lost in a distant reality that seemed totally disconnected from this.
And then, as Jace’s release began, sensation trembling once more through her ravaged body, she was connected to him again. Flesh to flesh. Exactly where she wanted to be. Needed to be.
When the last tremor had stilled, he put his forehead against hers. Once more she listened to his labored breathing, tracking it against her own. Matching the decrescendo of sensation as together they returned from the place the ancients had termed “the little death.”
She turned her head, her lips finding his hair even as she rejected those words. She knew death now. As did Jace.
This…This was the opposite. The antithesis of what had happened this afternoon.
This was life. Made more precious, perhaps, because of the knowledge they shared.
“Go to sleep.” His breath against her neck caused a shimmer of heat to slice through her veins like the last flicker of summer lightning after a storm.
Still he didn’t move, the weight of his body on hers not uncomfortable. She lay beneath him, feeling his heartbeat slow and then steady.
Like the familiar pulse a baby hears in the womb, it spoke of security. Protection. Love.
Love…
She couldn’t have pinpointed the moment when attraction had become something neither of them anticipated, but she no longer bothered to deny it. She was in love with Jace Nolan. Someone as different from who and what she was as night from day.
And despite the fact that tonight she would again sleep in his arms, she still had no idea whether his feelings mirrored her own.
Twenty-Four
There was a message from Dave waiting on her answering machine when she got home the next morning. Fearing her mother might be trying to reach her, she’d punched the button before going back to her bedroom to get dressed.
As soon as she’d heard what her boss had to say, she dialed Jace’s cell. He’d still been asleep when she’d left the apartment, but this was something he needed to know.
While she waited for him to pick up, she realized there might be nothing he could do about this. Still, if nothing else, she wanted to talk to someone about it. Normally that would have been Shannon or someone from school. Now that Jace was in her life—
“Hello?”
It sounded as if he’d been awake, which made her feel marginally better about calling. In her rush to get home and dressed for school, she hadn’t had time to think about the discovery she’d made last night.
It was too new to talk about, to Jace or anyone else. It was almost too new to examine inside her own head.
“The superintendent cancelled school for the rest of the week. Dave left a message on my machine. I guess they began calling everybody on staff last night as soon as the decision was made.”
The school had an automatic notification system that could be used to call both students and staff with emergency announcements. That Dave had called personally had been a courtesy to his faculty.
Jace didn’t say anything for a moment. Maybe he was unsure if that was all she wanted to tell him. Or maybe, she realized, he didn’t understand why she’d called him.
“I think this is the worst thing they could have done,” she said, trying to fill up the silence, “but then they didn’t ask me. And possibly none of the other teachers. They never do.”
“You’re concerned about the effect this has on the kids.”
“I don’t know that the grief counselors that they sent out before did much good, but just to let them stay home alone and stew about Tim…” She shook her head at the stupidity of that.
“You want me to contact the superintendent?”
It was the natural assumption for him to make. That she had called because she wanted him to do something.
“I just wanted to tell somebody. Even if you did call, I’m not sure how much listening the
y’d do. To you or anyone else. Maybe they talked to the counselors. Maybe this was a consensus. But my God, after two suicides—”
“Your friend came by last night. I forgot to tell you.”
“My friend?” Only then did she make the connection to what she’d just said about counselors, which must have reminded him. “Shannon? She came to your apartment?”
She knew why Jace had forgotten to tell her. There hadn’t been a lot of conversation between them last night. She’d pitched the two sacks of food they’d never gotten around to eating into the Dumpster this morning on her way out to her car.
“She said to tell you she’d decided to take your advice, but she needed to check something out first.”
The only advice Lindsey could remember giving Shannon was that it was time to tell Jace, or someone in authority, if she really believed someone in the program was capable of setting the church fires. As for checking something out…
“Did she tell you what?”
“That’s all she said, Lindsey. I’m just passing on the message. Belatedly.”
“I need to call her.”
There was a small pause, and then Jace said, “For what it’s worth, I agree with you.”
Not about calling Shannon. He was agreeing with her about the stupidity of closing the school.
“Then if you want to contact Dave, you can use my name. Tell him I told you what they’d done and that I’m concerned.”
“Let me talk to the sheriff first. This may have come from somewhere other than the superintendent’s office. I can’t imagine they’d make that decision without talking to us.”
It was possible Jace was right. Who was she to think she knew better than the experts?
The one who, in the aftermath of Andrea’s death, had “counseled” Tim Harrison’s class.
“I didn’t think about that. Maybe they’re right,” she said, fighting her sense of despair and incompetence. “I honestly don’t know what’s right or smart anymore.”
“Are you okay?”
An echo of the times he’d asked her that last night. Obviously, he was worried about the state of her mental health. Maybe he was afraid she was coming unglued under the pressure.