“If you put a few stones on the floor, we could probably have a sauna in here,” Kay said mildly.
“If you think I’m ever going to listen to you again, you have another thought coming. ‘Just one more hour, Mitch,’ said the lady with the frozen toes. If I’d known…” Mitch handed her the mug of hot cider and bent over to place yet another log on the fire. Tongues of flame shot up the chimney, sending a fresh wave of shadows on the walls.
“You were pretty good, once you got your skating legs back,” Kay remarked, not wanting to go overboard lest the praise should go to his head. Mitch had been doing flips and jumps within two hours.
“It’ll take more than one time on the ice.” Mitch pushed several more pillows behind her back. “Used to be a forward on a neighborhood hockey team. At the time, I thought I was pretty hot stuff… Now you look comfortable.”
She shot him an amused grin. Finally, he was satisfied, now that she was languishing back on the pillows like a sultan. Or sultaness. Most sultanesses, on the other hand, weren’t buried in oversized navy blue robes, folded over three times at the cuffs.
He settled down next to her, wrapped a hand around her bare foot to ensure that it had reached the boiling point, and took a sip of the well-aged cider.
So did Kay. The warm, tangy liquid slid down her throat, adding to a feeling of incredibly lazy well-being. The fire’s heat had long since thawed her freezing limbs. Mitch was overdoing the caretaking role a bit, but she knew it would pass. A little overprotectiveness was natural to males of the species, particularly when they first claimed their own territory. And Kay felt very claimed, relishing the way Mitch’s dark eyes checked in every second or two, as if he needed to be certain she was still there.
She was definitely there. Whether he knew it or not, she was humming “All My Tomorrows” under her breath. For a moment, Mitch faced the fire, and though flame and shadow captured the character lines on his face, he was relaxed, a softer Mitch than the one she’d first met, and much more open.
He turned toward her, and the sudden vibrancy in his eyes made her catch her breath. “What are you thinking?” she asked softly.
“Of you.” He uncoiled and sprang up, his eyes never leaving hers, and then a slash of smile brought a mischievous look to his face. “Of something I’ve been wanting to do to you from the very moment I met you.”
“Which is?”
He shook his head. “You’ll have to wait a minute.”
With a lithe step, he disappeared from the room again. Kay took a last sip of cider and set down the mug, thinking wryly that he could bottle his restless energy. He hadn’t been able to sit still from the instant they’d woken up that morn-that afternoon.
Her mind flickered back to their time on the skating rink, to watching Mitch fumble and grope and get back on his feet after countless falls. Most people would have given up. Most people didn’t have Mitch’s determination, that intense drive of his to fight for what he wanted, to achieve what he expected of himself. After two hours he’d remastered those skills he’d once had, but she had no doubt he’d have pushed himself further if she hadn’t pleaded cold.
A brooding softness touched her features as she stared into the fire, until she heard the sound of Mitch’s step behind her again. Glancing up, she was startled to see him carrying a blanket and a soft felt knapsack, both of which he plopped down next to her. “You’re about to get Cochran’s super-duper lecture on garnets,” he told her. “Unfortunately, you have to strip to get it.”
“Pardon?”
“It’s necessary. Trust me.”
“I do trust you. I just-”
“There’s no need to look wary. I haven’t got that kind of energy left, as you should know. Besides, why on earth would you jump to that conclusion just because I want you to take off your clothes? You’re not cold?”
“I didn’t say I was cold. I’m sweltering. I just-”
“Well, then.” He tugged at the sash of the robe, and then snatched at the voluminous sleeves. His movements were most efficient. Soon, she had nothing on but a pair of silk panties. The rest of her clothes had not been all wet when they’d first come in; he’d just insisted they were. “Now,” he said firmly, and then didn’t do anything at all, just let his eyes drift over her firelit flesh. “Now,” he repeated vaguely.
“The super-duper lecture,” she prompted him.
“Ah.” He unfolded the blanket and installed her on it with the pillows behind her. She watched, half smiling, as he perched on one hip next to her and reached for the knapsack. “This is a very serious business,” he told her.
“I can see that.”
“You’re going to have to listen very hard. Exams for this class are extremely difficult.”
“Already, I can see that I’ve had professors who were easier to please. No one, for example, ever required that I attend class in this particular condition.”
Mitch grinned, dug into the knapsack and pulled out a handful of gems. Very gently, he dropped them on her bare flesh, and then brought out another handful. Pushing aside the sack, he stretched out next to her and slowly started to rearrange the jewels-on her neck, her bare breasts, the flat, warm satin of her stomach…
“All garnets…” He cleared his throat. “All garnets are of the species almandite, found only in rocks of metamorphic origin… Actually, they’re made up of silicate minerals.” One ruby-red stone toppled from the tip of her breast to the crevice beside it. His eyes stole up to hers as he replaced the gem. “This first part of the lecture is kind of boring. Want to skip it?”
“I am not,” Kay assured him breathlessly, “bored.”
Neither was Mitch. He’d dreamed of showering her skin with gems. The reality was far more potent than the fantasy. The fire itself would have been enough, the way the flames added a luster and softness to her bare flesh. The stones had their own fire, and with every breath she took, thousands of scarlet and gold and emerald streaks darted over her breasts and throat and stomach.
The effect was not what he’d expected. The sensual look of her cloaked in jewels-that he’d expected, even the lush, erotic surge that sent heat all through his body. But he had not realized that the richest of stones would fail to compete with the warmth and fire and allure of the woman herself.
“Mitch-”
“Yes,” he said swiftly. “Garnets come in all colors. Witness-” His knuckles grazed her breasts as he plucked up a single stone and lifted it to the fire for her to see. “The standard dark ruby-colored garnet. The birthstone type. Pretty enough?”
“I-yes. Spectacular.”
“There are lots of those around. No big deal. Some semiprecious stones are a big deal, because their value is determined not just by quality, but by rarity. Certain kinds of garnets have more value than the precious stones they resemble. Such as this tsavorite-almost impossible to tell from an emerald, yes?”
She glanced at the incredible stone, and then at Mitch. “Beautiful,” she murmured, but it wasn’t strictly the stone she had in mind. A lock of dark hair had fallen over his forehead; she longed to brush it back. At the throat of his open flannel shirt, she could see the crisp spray of dark hair and could remember the feel of that hair against her bare skin. He was so very much a man.
The banked fires in his eyes were fooling her not at all, but it was more than sexual feeling that stirred her. It was an aching awareness of the man who was learning to share his feelings, who had so very much emotion inside him. An ache for his past loneliness…a loneliness that had lasted for way too many years.
“This one-” Mitch gently scooped a stone from her navel with a wicked grin “-is the most valuable. A demantoid garnet. Not found, regrettably, in Idaho-not yet, anyway. Geologically, there’s no specific reason why some couldn’t be discovered here, but for the moment that’s talking pipe dreams.”
Her fingers softly curled around his wrist. “As much as you loved it, you couldn’t skate, Mitch?” she whispered softly. “Even sometimes
?”
If he hadn’t pressed a finger on her lips, she might have believed he hadn’t heard her. “We’re getting to the important part of the lecture,” he told her. “Star garnets. The Star of Idaho-” He raised another stone for her to see. “When the light is just right behind it, there seems to be a six-rayed star inside it. Actually, the star effect is a flaw in the stone-rutile…” There was no waiting, not any longer. “This last stone,” he said quietly, “is mine.”
Mitch’s eyes held hers, the faintest hint of a lazy smile on his mouth as his fingers carefully stroked the intimate triangle between her thighs. It was no accident that a certain gem had spilled there. Kay’s breath caught. “Yours,” she echoed.
“Totally.” He leaned over and roughly brushed his lips on hers. “Totally, Kay. No one else will ever know her.”
“Mitch-”
The strangest emotion clawed at her soul, even as he was pressing the stone into her palm. “No one’s ever seen it before, Kay. It’s just been registered, a week ago. A new stone’s still discovered from time to time, even now-but not often. An eight-sided garnet-it’s been months since I mined the first group of them and had them studied and evaluated, but I knew. I knew the first time I laid eyes on her…”
She sat up, reluctantly dragging her eyes from Mitch’s face to look at his stone. Moving it carefully back and forth between her fingertips, she was captivated by the play of flickering sparks within. The star was like a secret, only revealed when one moved the stone with precious care, and then the silver darts played up against the dark ruby background, infinitely fragile yet as brilliant as sunlight. When deprived of light, the star was lost.
“When you register a new stone, you have to name it.” Mitch pushed the garnets gently off her, urging her back against the pillows. “Kaystar,” he murmured. “Do you like it? Sort of like Telstar. Open, love.”
Her lips obediently parted, welcoming the possession of his as a rush of jumbled feelings exploded in her head. His mouth molded over hers and his palm slid down her fire-warmed skin and the room tilted. She closed her eyes, savoring the gift he had offered her. “Mitch,” she whispered when his mouth lifted from hers to skim kisses down the side of her throat.
“Don’t tell me the name is corny. I’ve been afraid you would think that. I’m not a sentimental man, Kay, but there was no possible way I could name it anything else.”
“It’s beautiful, Mitch.” Softly, her fingers stroked his cheek, loving the fierce vulnerability in his eyes. “More than beautiful.” Her other hand moved to undo the buttons on his shirt, one by one. Finally, there was room for her palm to sneak inside, to stroke his warm flesh, to feel the beat of life beneath her fingertips. Unconsciously, her finger traced the smooth line of his scar.
He bent to kiss her again, but his hand closed over that single roaming finger of hers. “You still want to know, don’t you?” he said quietly. “It’s bothered you ever since we went skating.”
“Not to pry,” she whispered. “Just to share, Mitch. I want to share everything I can with you.”
Straightening up, he drew off his shirt, and then came down to her once more. His head bent as he slowly traced a finger around one breast, raising gooseflesh, but he didn’t stop. “It wasn’t,” he said roughly, “like being an invalid. No, there was no skating, but I was hardly bedridden, either. I could swim. Some. I could learn, I could study, I could talk to people. I wasn’t some inanimate…parasite.”
“Mitch,” Kay whispered.
“What?”
“Get that tone out of your voice,” she said softly.
“What tone?”
“The anger. Who exactly are you angry at, anyway?”
Mitch hesitated, and then half smiled, his fingers reaching up to sift through her hair. “Myself. For all those years I couldn’t do the things I expected of myself as a man.”
“Mitch, that’s so damned stupid.” She sat up, her hair shimmering behind her to catch the firelight. Her voice was a fierce, low cry, muffled as she pressed her lips to his chest, her arms wrapping tightly around him. She felt the kiss on the crown of her head, and then another. “Why three?”
“Three?”
“You said there were three operations…”
“Because a body,” he growled, “sometimes rejects the new valve. They put you on an operating table and they open you up, and then they decide what kind of valve they’re going to put in. A goat valve? A pig valve? Maybe a plastic one. There’s a choice of better than two dozen. They tried two and my body didn’t like either one. Now what do you want to know?”
He was so defensive suddenly, yet his lips scored kisses down her throat, into the hollow, tracing the line of her collarbone. When his tongue flicked out to taste that same warm skin, she caught her breath and struggled for control. It mattered that he finish it. For his sake, not for hers. “And the third time?” she whispered.
He sighed, raising his eyes directly to hers. “The surgeons didn’t want to perform the third operation,” he said flatly. “Six or seven hours under the knife is stress enough, they told me, but when the body rejects a new valve, suddenly the heart is under a lot more stress, and it becomes a matter of life or death. So I had two choices-no more operations and living the rest of my life as a sedentary recluse, or gambling on surgery one more time. Honey, don’t. I knew damn well you wouldn’t be satisfied until you’d heard the whole story, or I wouldn’t have told you…Kay.”
Her whole body was trembling. He’d almost died? He’d made a choice in which his life was at risk. She wound her arms around him, bit her lip and forced back tears.
“It’s over,” he said roughly. “Forget it, Kay. You wanted to know. Now you know. We’ll never talk of it again.” His face was grave, hovering over hers, worldly and old and fiercely possessive as he stroked her hair and took her lips again and again, willing a different kind of trembling to overtake her body.
The soft blanket crushed against her bare skin. Fire licked and spit in the hearth, and shadows climbed up the walls. Their breathing became increasingly labored. Once, Kay felt a cool, smooth gem beneath her and Mitch’s hand swept it away as if it were a bothersome pebble, almost making her smile. His precious stones were suddenly not so precious. There was clearly only one thing on his mind.
And he was different.
He wasn’t a new lover anymore. He knew exactly what he wanted and he claimed it. His touch was tender and in no way rough, but there was a dominance, a sureness as he claimed his right to touch, to stroke, to kiss, to tease.
Mitch was primal male, strong, overpowering. When he stripped off the rest of his clothes and she saw his naked body by firelight, she felt a searing awareness of her own vulnerability. What hurt him, hurt her. What gave him pleasure gave her infinite quantities of the same.
With exquisite tenderness, he entered her. She surged toward him in a frantic attempt to be part of him. For his years of loneliness-and for her own, for she suddenly realized that until Mitch she had been lonely-there was no possible way she could get close enough. Her heart suddenly ached with fear, and Mitch whispered to her, over and over; he whispered silken love words and he whispered promises of a golden world inhabited by just the two of them, and on a satin thread of ecstasy, he claimed her soul.
***
Except for the crackle of Sunday newspapers, there was total silence in Mitch’s bedroom. With a pillow behind her head, Kay lay flat on the carpet, with her legs crossed and her feet propped up on Mitch’s lap. A coffee mug was perched precariously on her chest as she turned a page.
Mitch was sprawled more conventionally on the couch, one hand holding the paper and the other resting on Kay’s ankle. When he tossed down one section to pick up another, he inevitably glanced down at Kay with an amused smile.
“You’ve been reading the classifieds for better than twenty minutes.”
“Want ads are fascinating. Especially the personals. Listen.” She crackled the paper. “‘DWM.’ I assume that me
ans divorced white male? ‘Looking for nice lady around fifty. Don’t smoke or drink, financially secure, not fat-but no heavy night action.’” Kay laid down the page. “I thought it was funny when I first read it. Now I think it’s sad.”
“Resist the urge to call him up and take him home,” Mitch advised dryly.
“I wasn’t going to,” Kay said indignantly.
“I know you better.”
“Well, the poor guy. Having to advertise in the paper. He sounds so lonely…”
Mitch reached down and replaced her want ads with the safer sports section. “It’s no wonder you fill that house of yours up with orphans. And don’t read page six. The guy who tore a few ligaments made three million dollars last year.”
“Which would hardly make up for-”
She heard Mitch sigh heavily, and mutter something under his breath that sounded distinctly like “softie.” Grinning, she flipped through the sports section until she found the crossword page. She raised a hand and found Mitch dropping a pencil in it before she even needed to ask.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You’re getting pretty good at that.”
“At what?”
“Anticipating what I want to do before I want to do it.” Kay sighed. “Could you have anticipated that I just spilled the last of my cold coffee on my sweat shirt?”
Mitch chuckled. “If you’re determined to read lying on the floor-”
“I am.”
“Well, then.”
Kay set down the empty cup and newspaper and stood up with a disgusted look at the stain on her stomach. “I’m becoming slovenly,” she announced. She took two steps toward the bathroom before flipping her head back. “And if you loved me even a thimbleful, you would have instantly denied that.”
“I’d rather help you take a shower.”
“A spot no bigger than a quarter hardly rates a shower.”
“See? You’re becoming slovenly.” Hooded eyes studied her. “I could wash all the difficult places for you,” he coaxed. “The backs of your knees. Between your shoulders-”
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