Ain’t Misbehaving

by Jennifer Greene

“Pickles?”

  She pushed the trapdoor shut and locked it, then turned to retrieve the food from his arms. “Everyone loves dill pickles,” she informed him. “Furthermore, there’ll be a fruit salad. Not necessarily a fresh fruit salad, but what do you want to bet by the time we get this fixed you’ll be so raving hungry you couldn’t care less?”

  The corner of Mitch’s mouth was twitching. “We brought steaks, you know.”

  “We’ll have those tomorrow. When I’ve figured out how to cook on the wood stove without destroying everything. You-” Kay pointed a wagging figure in his direction. “Just stay out of my way and let me go.”

  He wouldn’t. She should have known better, Kay thought wryly. He started baking potatoes and cooking the steaks before she’d begun the fruit salad; he took the dough for the biscuits out of her hands and set the table before she even found the plates. Arguing with him accomplished nothing beyond having her wineglass refilled and her fanny consolingly patted as he worked around her.

  They used the coffee table as their dining room. Seated cross-legged across from each other, Mitch fed her a warm biscuit, dripping with butter and honey, just as if she were incapable of feeding herself. To her total embarrassment, once she’d swallowed the morsel, she yawned.

  Mitch chuckled. “Late nights just don’t go with hours in the cold and a little wine, now do they?”

  “I’ll wake up,” she promised.

  “By the time you get your bath after dinner, you’ll be so sleepy you won’t even appreciate the feather bed.”

  “My bath,” Kay echoed vaguely.

  “Your bath,” Mitch affirmed.

  Kay chewed rapidly on another mouthful of steak, regarding Mitch through feathery lashes. She’d evaded intimacy for days, not from preference but from common sense. You don’t judge the heat of the fire by getting burned up in it. A little distance for Mitch’s sake, and she hoped he’d see they had more than sex together anyway.

  She took a sip of wine. “Actually, I don’t need a bath,” she mentioned.

  “You’ll love it. Melted snow is so soft that it’s like silk on your skin, and if we drag the tub over by the stove you’ll think you’re in a sauna.”

  “Hmm.” There was just a hint of a stubborn cast to Mitch’s chin; she’d never noticed it before. His dark hair had been finger brushed; there was a shadow of stubble on his chin. A red flannel shirt hugged those strong shoulders of his, and in the light of the stove and the kerosene lamps, his features took on dominantly male shadows. Don’t-argue-with-me shadows.

  “Is taking a bath a prerequisite to being invited up here again?” she questioned wryly.

  “All guests are given a claw-foot baptism the first time they come here,” he explained.

  “A Cochran custom.”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “And have you got another backwoods story for me?” she asked with a chuckle.

  As if on cue, she heard the faint piercing howl of a wolf in the distance and started. Mitch, standing up to gather plates, leaned over to plant a kiss on her forehead. “That’s the other reason you’re taking a bath. This is a strange place with scary sounds in the night, and a hot bath will guarantee that you sleep well in spite of yourself.”

  “I expect I’ll sleep well regardless,” Kay insisted, which had the same effect as trying to make an arrow pierce through steel.

  Snow melted at a very slow rate. Mounds of snow produced very little water. The dishes were long done before the tub was a third filled; she’d lost a trivia game before it was two-thirds filled; and by the time it was full and she was staring at it interestedly with all her clothes on, Mitch seemed to be refilling her glass again-this time with a spiced mulled wine that had the effect of a potent sleeping pill combined with an aphrodisiac.

  “You don’t need this sweater,” Mitch remarked.

  He was so right. She hadn’t needed the sweater in hours. The wind had picked up outside, but though it whistled around the windows, the inside of the cabin was marvelously warm. Mitch’s hands were marvelously warm as they unbuttoned the shirt beneath her sweater, and then that garment, too, was tossed aside… She stared in amazement; he’d actually managed to hook it on one of the elk’s horn points.

  “He was staring at you,” Mitch explained gravely.

  Kay giggled. “It wasn’t personal. It’s obvious that he stares at everyone.”

  “Not at you. He has no right whatsoever to stare at you. Particularly…”

  The bra went, then she felt his hands on the zipper of her pants. Somewhere in the muddled part of her brain, she was saying to hell with it. Mitch’s hands felt good. The look in his eyes warmed her blood, and the moment she slid into the hot water and leaned her head against the side of the porcelain tub, her eyes closed in sheer ecstasy.

  She really hadn’t had so much wine; she was simply exhausted, physically and emotionally. The water lapped over her and soothed her weary muscles, and on the far side of the room, Mitch turned down both of the kerosene lamps. Soft shadows exploded in the silence; the crackle of the fire in the stove was mesmerizing, and she only flicked open an eye because for some odd reason the water level suddenly rose.

  Mitch stepped in, and when he sank down, the water threatened to overflow. It did splash a little over the sides when he reached out both hands and pulled her to him.

  “My hair’s going to get all wet,” she said. Not exactly the most brilliant conversational gambit she’d ever come up with.

  “You’re absolutely right. Your hair is going to get all wet,” he agreed.

  She caught the hint of a lazy smile before his lips nuzzled down to the hollow in her damp shoulder. She considered worrying about the space in the tub, but truthfully the old thing was huge. She considered worrying about drowning, but that didn’t seem of any particular immediate interest.

  He wanted her. Now. Urgency dominated the intimate caresses he lavished on her body; his mouth claimed hers, tilting her head back so that she had the strangest sensation of floating in a dark, warm world of the senses. His skin was so slick, so warm, his chest muscles sleek and slippery against her breasts.

  Desire pulled at her, with the lulling promise of a pied piper’s flute; she felt swept along, carried by the power of emotion that vibrated from Mitch. He laid her back, only to slowly propel her legs around his, tucking her around him. As he rained slow, insistent kisses on her face, murmuring to her, she felt the warm, silken thrust of his body inside her.

  Her breath locked somewhere in her throat. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his damp shoulder.

  “Look at me,” he whispered.

  Such black eyes locked with hers. Dots of moisture beaded Mitch’s forehead like crystals. His face had a faint reddish glow, half shadow, half firelight. “Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?” he whispered. “Do you have any idea how good you feel around me, little one?”

  His thighs tightened around her and she closed her eyes. “Mitch…”

  “So slow in water,” he murmured. “I can last in water for a hundred years for you. It’s like the friction of silk, and for you it’s going to go on and on until you can’t stand it…”

  “Mitch…”

  His lips caught the name, captured it, held it. He would show her. He could think of a thousand creative ways to give her pleasure; she just had to give him time to learn them all. A lifetime. For the moment, he had now, and there was no way she could escape from him before he’d erased the thought of any other lovers from her mind. Experience or no, there couldn’t possibly be anyone who’d ever love her more.

  ***

  Kay smiled in the darkness, as wide awake as she had been sleepy an hour before. Mitch’s arms were warm around her. The feather bed felt like a cushion of clouds, and a freshly fed stove was sending out noisy little sparks that toasted the dark room.

  She’d put on a long flannel nightgown moments before, modeled it for Mitch, and admitted she’d bought it for the trip
north because it looked sort of north woodsy. He liked it very much, he assured her…as he stripped it off her.

  The wolf howled again in the distance, and she wrapped her arm more tightly around Mitch’s waist. “You’d think it would get tired and go to sleep, wouldn’t you?”

  She felt Mitch’s smile rather than saw it. “It’s just a boy wolf calling for his girl. Don’t get uptight.”

  “Do I feel uptight?”

  “No.” His fingers smoothed back her hair. When he tilted her chin up, she could almost see his eyes sparkling in the darkness. “You definitely don’t feel uptight,” he murmured.

  “You can’t expect to come this far north without hearing wolves,” she whispered reasonably. “They provide…atmosphere.”

  “And yet you dropped that extra log in front of the door just in case they got in through the bolted door.”

  Her palm connected with his rear end, a love pat for his sass, and then lingered. How could a man with such broad shoulders have such a flat little fanny? Men were built very strangely. Her palms slowly rediscovered that strange territory, with sheer sensual pleasure. He felt good. Every inch of him felt good. And he’d just taken her to ecstasy and back again, to peaks she’d never imagined, to delights in intimacy she’d never felt before.

  In silence, she stroked his smooth, warm skin, until she felt the whisper of his lips on her forehead, and her hands stilled. The way his fingers combed back her hair, over and over, the way he let the silken strands wind around his fingers, the way his eyes met hers in the darkness…it seemed a moment in time, always hers.

  “Mitch?”

  “Hmm?”

  Her fingers touched his face, tenderly amused at the rapid growth of beard on his chin. “You could have told me,” she said softly. “I only love you all the more for it.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “That I was your first.”

  Tension whipped through his body so fast that he could feel a tight knot forming in his stomach. Until that instant, he’d wanted to believe there hadn’t been anything that shouted inadequate, untried about his performance. “I wasn’t aware that…you knew.”

  “I didn’t know, ”she assured him gently. “Not in any physical sense. It was something that I figured out because you’d been ill for so long, and at that particular time in your life-” He was quiet, so quiet and so tense, that Kay felt bewildered. “You’re a beautiful lover,” she whispered, “and I just wanted the chance to share that with you, Mitch. You made me feel all the more special because I was first with you.”

  His arm dropped away from her, and he turned over on his back. “Is that what you felt?” he asked. Had she gotten a kick out of being his first? Before she moved on to more experienced lovers?

  His tone could have chilled the tropics. A night that couldn’t possibly go wrong seemed to be going very wrong very quickly.

  “You’ve been pulling back, Kay. Do you think I haven’t felt it? Your refusal to accept the necklace was only part of that. You’ve been pulling back from the minute I mentioned marriage.”

  Something terribly thick seemed to clog her throat. “For your sake,” she said quietly. “I don’t believe marriage is what you want, Mitch.”

  He gave her credit for trying to let him down gently. “Or what you want?”

  His cold tone pierced her like a knife. “What I want? Mitch, listen. People…feel differently toward the first person they make love with. It’s not always a lasting thing… I mean, a lot of people have to test out other waters and-”

  “I hear you,” he said roughly. “But I definitely don’t need to hear anymore. Enough’s enough, Kay. Leave it at that.” Maybe he’d been expecting to hear that, ever since she’d turned cool. Maybe she’d never felt anything lasting for him. He’d been a “first” for her-that was all.

  Kay’s lips parted, with a dozen words trying to pour out. Anxiety and distress tore at her heart. “Mitch…”

  “There’s nothing more to say, Kay. You’re absolutely right-I just hadn’t thought about it like that before.”

  In time, she turned on her side, and a very long time later he finally heard her restless tossing turn into a restless sleep.

  He stayed on his back and closed his eyes. He knew that she’d wanted to talk further, but he’d already heard the only thing that mattered. Being his first had been special for her, but she didn’t want him confusing that with something lasting. Now it all made sense; he knew why she’d pulled back the minute he’d mentioned marriage. More talk wasn’t necessary. Kay would only try to be gentle on the letdown.

  He didn’t want her gentleness. If he couldn’t have her love, he simply wanted to extricate them both from the relationship as rapidly and painlessly as possible. For her, and for him.

  She lay only inches from him. And yet miles distant. In the middle of the night, she kicked off the covers, and he firmly tucked them back around her.

  Once he got up to add more wood to the fire.

  At dawn, he had their things packed to return home. A fierce ache racked through his bones, like the loneliness of the north wind seeping through his soul. All the physical pains he’d suffered in his life were nothing next to this. He’d fought so hard for life, only to discover that it meant nothing without Kay.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kay sprayed some perfume on her wrists, smoothed down the silver jersey tunic and stared glumly at the mirror. She couldn’t have been less in the mood for a New Year’s Eve party.

  She was dressed to seduce the world, which didn’t help. The silver top was slinky and low-necked, and she wore it pneumonia-style-braless. Since she never went braless, she’d hoped that naughty feeling would transform a mood gone dismal; it wasn’t working. The eye makeup wasn’t working either. Or the perfume. The silver skirt should have at least given her some self-confidence; it hugged her hips and showed off her legs, but unfortunately she really didn’t give a damn.

  The doorbell rang. She refrained from jumping a foot and a half, managing to walk to the door with reasonable sedateness.

  “You’re early,” she remarked with a deliberately light tone and a smile as Mitch stepped inside.

  “Only by a few minutes.”

  She hesitated. “Mitch, this really isn’t necessary. You don’t have to follow through with this, just because we’d already agreed to go…” She devoured him with her eyes. He looked utterly devastating in his dark suit and red shirt, his hair brushed back and his eyes as cool as arctic ice.

  “I said we’d go, and we will. You could hardly find someone else to go with at this late date.” He devoured her with his eyes, furious she was going out in public without a bra, entranced at the line of her hip as she bent over to pick up her coat.

  “I could have gone alone.”

  “And had explanations to make. Forget it, Kay. It’s nothing. You can go your own way when you get there and I’ll go mine.”

  “Fine.” She spit out the word with a lethally polite smile. “That sounds wonderful. Exactly what I had in mind.”

  “Good.” He stopped himself from yelling at her for not buttoning up her coat. If she wanted to expose her entire chest to the icy wind, that was her business.

  He felt used, and he wasn’t likely to forget it. He hoped she’d enjoyed being someone’s first. He ushered her out to the car, opened the door, refrained with exacting precision from touching her and slammed the door in her ear.

  Kay winced, crossed her legs nervously, arranged the purse on her lap and tried hard not to let her teeth chatter in the frigid air until Mitch could get the heater going. Chattering teeth would be a hint of weakness, of human feeling. She had no human feeling for Mitch. She felt used, and she wasn’t likely to forget it. The instant she’d brought up the subject at the cabin, he’d whipped out of the relationship like a man set free. He just hadn’t thought about it like that before, he’d said; maybe not, but as soon as she’d pointed out that first didn’t have to be last, he’d all too quickly agreed. H
e hadn’t been able to take her home fast enough the next morning. She’d been the first notch in his belt; she had no doubt there’d be thousands of others after her.

  The heat hadn’t begun to work by the time Mitch had driven five doors down the street and parked the car again. They could have walked, Kay thought wryly. A car rolled up behind them, and they would unfortunately be pinned in. Mitch didn’t seem to notice.

  “Listen, Mitch…” she said as he opened the car door. She glanced up at him, to see those frigid dark eyes glaring at her. Still, she tried. He wasn’t likely to know many people at Stix’s party; it was sort of an old friends’ reunion from high school. Why Mitch had insisted on keeping the date…but Mitch was stubborn like that. “Look, I’m sure you really don’t want to be here. I’m not in a mood for a party myself, and it’s not like-”

  “I am very definitely in a mood for a party,” he corrected.

  Well, maybe he was. After all, it was an opportunity to meet a lot of women, Kay thought bitterly.

  Noise and smoke rolled out the door as Mitch opened it. Stix, five inches taller than anyone else, immediately spotted them and bore down as if he’d been waiting just for the two of them to show up. Kay was treated to a bear hug that lingered and a strangely glassy-eyed stare with a hint of sadness. Before she could make sense of that, Stix was swinging a hand in Mitch’s direction. “You damn well better take care of my best girl, hear?”

  Obviously, Stix had already had his share of holiday spirits. Kay extricated herself from his abundant affection and glanced around hopelessly at the milling crowd. Dancers had rolled up the rug in the dining room and were gyrating to a primeval beat. The noise level precluded conversation, and most faces were flushed. Most faces were also at least somewhat familiar, more Stix’s crowd than hers, but certainly not strange.

  She glanced back at Mitch uncertainly, to find that unreadable stare of his settling in on a roaming blonde. His suit jacket had disappeared with his topcoat, and Stix had pushed a drink into his hand before dissolving into the crowd. Mitch’s eyes darted only momentarily back to hers. “Feel free to have a good time…” He motioned to the crowd.