He wasn't.
His sigh was so ferocious, and so close beside her, that she felt it like a warm wind brushing her face. In the same instant, a hard grasp fastened on her wrist and pulled her forward. It was a small jerk, almost gentle, but it carried enough force to send her spinning into the room. She caught the post of the bed and sat down, abruptly, on the mattress.
Reid pushed the door closed with a snap, then swung toward her. “Testing my reflexes?” he asked in quiet rage out of the darkness.
His window, like her own, was open to the storm. Beyond the curtains that billowed with the wind, lightning stitched its way down the dark night sky. In its fading blue glare she saw the stalwart masculine beauty of his naked body. And the torment in his face.
“No,” she said in quiet answer. “Rather, tempting them.”
“Pity the poor beast. Is that it?”
His voice recoiled from her, drifting away toward the room's blackest corner. With his back to the wall there, he stopped.
“More like mutual consolation,” she said, when she was sure he did not intend to leave the bedroom.
“And to hell with the rules.”
She shook her head, and her hair slid forward, half concealing her face. “This isn't a case of forever. Consider it, if you like, simple human contact. For that, I've followed procedure.”
“Coming here in the middle of the night?” he asked incredulously.
“You weren't asleep, or you would never have heard me. I tried to approach you from the front. I gave you fair warning by calling out. I moved as slowly as possible. And I don't think, if you're fair, that you can call my being here a threat.”
“That is a matter of opinion,” he said succinctly.
“Maybe I misunderstood,” she said, rising to her feet and moving toward him with gliding steps. “Tell me, if I come toward you now, like this, if I reached out to touch you, would I still be within the rules?”
The wind sweeping into the room molded her gown to her every curve and hollow. It took the folds of silk, the ends of her long hair, and sent them flying toward him. As they swept out to brush him with feather strokes, she stopped. Lifting a hand, she placed the tips of her fingers against his chest one by one. Slowly, carefully, she trailed them through the golden brown tangle of hair on his chest.
“Don't!” The word was harsh with command.
She ceased all movement. She had been sustained until this moment by bravado and desire and an odd sense of rightness. They were beginning to desert her.
She drew back her hand and clasped her arms around her upper body, holding tight. In tones freighted with need and despair, she said, “I don't pity you; you do a good enough job of that yourself. But you might consider, before you sacrifice both of us, that other people have problems that require human contact as much as you reject it. And they, too, feel pain.”
He listened, it seemed, to the truth that decorated her words. He said quietly, “The only thing I'm hurting is your pride. Pride mends.”
She considered that, and also the faint shiver she saw in his arms, which were pressed behind him as if he would push the wall aside to give himself room for retreat. Her voice was tentative, but without the sound of defeat: “Tell me you don't want me, and I'll go.”
“That would be an obvious lie.”
It would indeed. The glimmering lightning confirmed the evidence of his arousal.
She said, “Why is it so complicated, then?”
“Oh, it isn't,” he answered in challenge, “not if all you want is plain sex. I somehow thought you would expect moonlight and flowers. And promises for tomorrow.”
“I had that,” she said, her eyes wide in the dark. “It didn't last.”
“Nor will this. And I will hurt you,” he went on, the words fretted with desperation. “If not now, then in some moment when you most need kindness, when you are least ready.”
Her voice aching, she whispered, “I only need tonight.”
The wind blew around the house. The rain washed it. The lightning glimmered with the steady pulse of old, worn-out neon.
His answer, when it came, carried the biting edge of defeated anger. “So,” he said, “do I.”
He reached for her as if he meant to break every bone in her body, or make her regret her daring. She didn't flinch, still she could not prevent the shiver that ran over her as he closed his hands upon her. He swept her up in arms like the hard, enclosing branches of trees, and stepped with her toward the bed.
She expected to be flung onto the mattress. Instead he sank down upon it, holding her close as he settled with her upon its yielding surface. His fingers, as he touched her, drawing her close against his long body, were careful not to bruise. His kiss, as his lips found hers, was tender beneath its demanding force.
The ache of released tension and gladness crowded into her throat. Cammie swallowed hard and placed her hands on his shoulders, curling them around his neck. Endlessly accepting, deliberately pliant, she moved against him in accommodation.
It was her last conscious decision. His mouth on hers destroyed thought, and the caresses of his hard hands pushed aside the barriers of polite social usage between them as he stripped away the silk that covered her. If they had ever been strangers, they were no longer.
His warm breath grazing her nipple caused it to contract. He laved the sweet, crinkled nub with his tongue in pensive pleasure, circling the dusky coral aureole and the pale, soft-skinned mound that trembled with the beating of her heart. Arriving at the peak once more, he took it into his mouth with gentle suction, delicate abrasion.
Cammie smoothed her hands over his shoulders, pressing the sensitive palms to the ridged muscles while rich, triumphant pleasure rose inside her. With it was mingled an immense, spreading lassitude. She wanted this moment, this night of storm, never to end.
Alive, she could not remember ever being so alive. With deep drawn breaths, she reveled in the burgeoning responses of her body. She was aware with every molecule of her being of the man who held her, the formidable strength of his lithe form, the fresh, heated male scent of him, the silken curl of his hair at the base of his neck, the taut resilience of his skin.
He trailed a row of kisses, moist and heated, down the valley between her breasts, to her navel, then lower. He brushed the flat surface of her abdomen with his lips, made wet arabesques with his tongue, then blew warm air across the sensitive curls at the apex of her thighs. The rapture of it spiraled through her, sending a shudder of intense longing deep into the lower part of her body.
It was a craving that he tended with refinements so consummate and drawn out that they bordered on torture. Inhaling her scent like the fragrance of an exotic flower, he delved into its heart, tasting her, laving the most sensitive and delicate portion with his tongue, drinking the nectar that she released for him.
The muscles of her abdomen convulsed, and a soft moan sounded in her throat. He paid no attention, but gathered her hips in his hands and lifted her closer.
The rain fell. They never noticed. With eager mouths and questing hands, searing want and fierce restraint, they sought each other on the mattress. In lightning's silver outlining, they handled the springing hardness and liquid softness of each other's bodies, learning texture and tone, the shaping of the bones underneath, the sites of utmost response.
They did not speak above a whisper. With concern and carefully gathered signals, they dredged their hearts for grace and the gifts of transient pleasure, and spread them before each other. And in the process they wove a fabric of desire, mutual and immutable, that had in its strength some emotion so much greater than mere lust that it might substitute, for this one night, for a minor form of love.
She brushed a hand along his side, caressing the faint ridges of one of several old scars. Moving her fingers farther down, to the line of his taut flank, she clenched them, letting him feel the light scrape of her nails. He shivered, a gasp catching in his throat. She kissed his shoulder and raked it g
ently with her teeth, then licked the tiny sting away, tasting the salted essence of him. He pressed into her with the long, hard fingers she had wondered about, had needed. With an incoherent murmur, she tensed against him, around him, undulating in the grip of fierce, annihilating wonder.
He needed no other sign. He placed his knee between her smooth thighs, spreading them wide, fitting his hardness into her wet, tender depths.
Cammie shuddered with the intensity of the delight brought by that fevered joining. She wanted him deep, and with the need, opened herself completely to him in trembling demand. He met it, pressing slowly in and out, teasing, taking her higher and higher into rarefied heights of effort.
She surged to meet him, lifting, rocking. He increased his depth and speed. She took his thrusts, feeling herself softening with them like malleable clay, reforming, molding herself to a perfect receptacle for his tumultuous hunger. Their skins glowed with heat, grew slippery with moisture. In the black and silver world of the storm, they stared into each other's eyes with wild, near desperate yearning.
Surcease took them unaware, in sudden, blinding reward. With it, they soared: released, windblown, pulsing with the consummate splendor that is the beating heart of life. They clasped it to them and rode it to its inevitable end.
For long moments they lay stunned, with panting breaths and fused, trembling bodies. Finally Reid shifted his weight, easing from her. He drew her long hair from under his shoulder, brushing it away from her face. Drawing a silken strand down her back as if testing the length, he left his palm resting in the center of her back, where the strand ended.
Outside, the rain fell with a ceaseless drumming that echoed the throbbing of their hearts. The lightning was only a dim, distant flicker.
Reid spread his fingers, smoothing his palm in a slow circle. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to rush you.”
“Did you?” she said in husky doubt.
His low laugh feathered across her breast, making the nipple contract. “A little,” he admitted. “It's been a long time for me.”
“For me, too,” she said. Shifting, she placed a forefinger on the flat coin of his pap and rubbed, watching the shadowy movement through eyes that were slumberous with remembered rapture. Her movement stilled. “At least, it's been more than a year since — but for the rest, the best, not ever.”
He lifted his head. His voice taut, he said, “Never?”
She moved her head in minute but precise negation. “Keith—”
“—was a selfish bastard,” he finished for her. “And stupid.”
“He thought he knew what he was doing, but he didn't. You did.” She turned her flushed face into the curve of his neck, hiding it. This was one more secret that she had never breathed to anyone.
“Next time will be better,” he said quietly.
“Will it?” she said in muffled incredulity.
“I think it's possible,” he said, humor and wonder threading his tone. He cupped the gentle turn of her cheek in his long fingers and lifted her mouth to meet his. “Shall we see?”
4
REID WOKE WITHIN SECONDS OF THE TIME he had set himself, two hours after he'd closed his eyes. The rain had stopped. All that was left of the storm was the uneven splatter of water dripping from the trees outside.
He lay still for long moments, consciously recognizing the coolness of the air after the rain, the feel of the smooth percale sheets under him, the softness of the mattress, the silken tickle of the swath of hair that strayed across his arm. Cammie lay against him, her hips nestled against his belly. God, but it felt right.
He was motionless, impressing the feel of the woman in his arms deliberately, indelibly, upon his memory while his mind wandered back through the night. The sweetness of her, the way she had responded to his slightest touch and least urging, the small sounds of pleasure and need she had made, all these things shifted in his mind like a dream of glory. There was nothing coy, nothing vulgar in the woman he held, only grace and caring and frank sensuality. He had been honored that she had come to him, and he knew it. That he had taken as much advantage of it as he was able in the space of time given to him was something he could not help.
He was sure that never, even when he was a wrinkled, wobbling husk of a man, would he forget how he'd felt when he knew he was the first to help her reach orgasm. It affected him so profoundly that he'd tried to give her double that pleasure for every time he took his own from her. And in doing it, had increased his own many times over.
The memory would warm him on cold nights for a long time. As it warmed him now. Incredibly.
Self-control was an absolute necessity, even if it was a bit late for it. He closed his eyes as he fought the stirring of his body. It took longer than it should have to conquer it.
Easing away from Cammie, he drew the sheet and blanket closer around her, then slid from the bed. He had left his clothes on a chair near the door. He picked them up on his way out.
Moments later, dressed except for the boots he carried, he descended the stairs in the dark and made his way along the hall. As he passed the sun room, he paused, then swung inside.
The portrait over the marble mantel had squares of light flung across it from the outside security light near the driveway on that side of the house. One square illuminated the painted eyes. He walked closer, tilting his head back to stare up at it.
The painting was life-size, showing Cammie seated in a chair of dark green brocade. Her dress was soft gray velvet with a wide lace collar that had been delicately reproduced in silvery, cobweb strokes. The painted hair was lustrous, cunningly back-lighted for a near halo effect. The face was beautifully captured; its oval shape; the determined chin and straight, aristocratic nose; the delicately molded mouth, with its confident smile. It was the eyes, however, that captured his attention. They were large, a delicate blending of green, blue, and brown with a gray outer ring; and they were secretive, mysterious.
It came to Reid as he stood looking up that there was in them the sensitive sadness of the conscious dreamer. They were the eyes of one who prefers the imaginary world she has built for herself, even knowing its falseness, to ugly reality.
It was a part of Cammie that she hid remarkably well. He might never have recognized it, he thought, if he had not seen it firsthand, as she tried to avoid accepting his help, as she talked about her marriage. Her most lethal verbal barbs were brought out to protect that inner self. She allowed no one to trespass.
He wanted entry there more than he wanted life itself. And was as unlikely to find it as he was certain of eventual death.
He wondered if Keith Hutton had ever penetrated his wife's defenses. Or if they had been erected, primarily, to keep him out.
It seemed, looking back, that they had always been in place. Teenage girls were notorious for tender hearts, but Cammie's had been more sensitive than most. She was the girl who could cry on demand, not as a simple parlor trick, but from the mental pain of living in a world where others were carelessly cruel. She was the girl who could be depended on to recognize poetic allusions, who walked around flowers in the grass instead of stepping on them, who always rescued lame ducks and rooted for the underdog.
She had changed very little from those days.
He had.
He didn't like the idea that he might qualify as either a lame duck or an underdog in her eyes. If he did, however, it made him even more dangerous to her. He would never become a part of her inner world, even if he could. He would tear it down from the inside; it could be no other way. That was how he had been trained: to destroy.
It was possible that he had already given her the greatest injury that could be inflicted. He had shown her, without intending it, even trying his best to avoid it, that the walls of her inner world could be breached. She had invited him in, it was true, but he could have, should have, refused. At least he had enough integrity left, and strength, to leave quietly, and to close the door behind him as he went.
; Or maybe it was only self-preservation, after all; he couldn't stand it if he hurt Cammie. It would never be of his own will, but things had a way of happening, intended or not. He had learned that the hard way.
His wife had been a lot like Cammie, or so he had once thought: the same rich hair color, the same eyes, even if Joanna's had been more green than hazel. But what he had taken for sensitivity in the woman he married had turned out to be timidness. Her concern and loving attachment had only been used to make him feel guilty for not caring more, while her passion was counterfeit, a camouflage for desperate neediness.
Joanna, focused on her own feelings, her own limited vision of what marriage should be, had never even begun to understand him. She had been incapable of accepting what had really happened when he turned on her that morning in the bathroom. She wouldn't believe it was the result of simple animal reflexes, but insisted on taking it as a violent rejection. He could not love her, she said, could not really want to be married to her, if he could hurt her like that.
Maybe she had been right; he didn't know. If she'd been able to forgive him, he would have lived with her and tried his best to make some kind of life. It hadn't happened that way. And when she was gone, when the divorce was final and her belongings no longer cluttered his life, he had been embarrassed at the relief he felt. Joanna, it seemed, hadn't been the only one willing to accept any substitute for love and a normal life.
He wondered what Cammie would have done in Joanna's place. He wondered, but the last thing he wanted was to find out. The answer might be too dangerous, for both of them.
He couldn't stand the thought of anyone else coming close enough to be a threat, either. Even her husband — especially her husband.
What she needed was a guard. Someone outside who could keep watch from a distance — a great distance — and make certain she wasn't hurt any more.
Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) Page 6