by Linda Turner
Alice, however, believed the legend with all her heart. One glimpse at the confident glint in her eyes and Jennifer knew she could talk until she was blue in the face and it wouldn’t change the woman’s mind. “I guess time will tell, then, won’t it?” she said easily, and let it go.
Later, however, when the lights were out and she was comfortably stretched out in the bed in Alice’s guest room, so weary she should have dropped right off to sleep the second she was horizontal, the conversation replayed itself again and again in her head. Disgusted, Jennifer told herself that only a desperate old maid would make the mistake of buying into such a tale.
But what if it was true?
The thought tempted and tantalized and enticed, and then, as if on cue, she heard the music. Soft and low, it was hardly more than a whisper on the night air. She caught her breath for a second and cocked her head to listen. One of the nightspots farther up the river must have turned up their speakers, she decided. But as she tried to figure out what the haunting melody was, she realized it was a waltz. A lilting, old-fashioned, romantic waltz.
And it was coming from the ballroom in the attic.
She went perfectly still, the thumping of her heart loud in her ears as she recalled the stories Alice had told her about the ballroom and the music that could sometimes be heard coming from there. Could anyone else hear it now? How could they not? It seemed to grow louder by the second.
Rolling onto her back, she stared up at the darkened ceiling and could have sworn a live orchestra was playing two stories above her. What was going on up there? If she listened harder, could she hear the slide of feet on the wooden floor as couples twirled in time to the music? If she went up there, could she see them? Before the thought had fully registered, she was throwing back the covers and padding in her bare feet to the guest-room door.
The apartment was dark and from the other side of Alice’s closed bedroom door came the steady drone of snoring loud enough to wake the dead. Grinning, Jennifer silently stole through the shadowy apartment and let herself out into the hall. There, the music was clearer, sweeter. Humming, her eyes already adjusted to the lack of light, she started up the stairs in the dark.
With every step she climbed, the music got louder. By the time she neared the third-floor landing, she didn’t know how anyone in the house slept. Surely they had to hear it! But no lights flickered on downstairs and the rest of the house’s occupants continued to sleep. Amazed, Jennifer took the final step into the ballroom and stopped dead in her tracks.
Candles. They were everywhere. Long white tapers dripping wax from wall sconces and chandeliers, they cast a golden glow over a ballroom that looked like something out of an old Currier and Ives lithograph. In a corner on the opposite side of the room, a small but complete orchestra played a waltz, while in the center of the ballroom, women in hooped dresses dipped and swirled and turned to the lilting strains of the music. It all looked so real that Jennifer could have reached out and touched them if she’d just lifted her hand, but she was afraid to move, afraid to chance shattering the magic of the moment.
All his senses on alert, his service revolver loaded and in his hand, Sam silently followed the shadowy figure up the stairs and wondered how the hell the sneaky bastard had gotten in. The front door had been locked when he’d come in at the end of his shift, just as it always was, the security system armed and ready to scream at the first sign of a break-in. The house was silent, however, which was why he’d been so shocked when he’d spied someone clinging to the shadows and creeping up the stairs like a thief in the night. Who the hell was it? And why the devil was he going all the way up to the attic? Nothing was up there but a few old pieces of furniture. He knew—he’d helped Alice cart them up there for storage.
His eyes trained on the shadowy figure above him in the darkness, he closed the distance between them, instinctively avoiding all the squeaky spots on the stairs. A little closer and he’d have the jerk, he thought grimly as the intruder reached the top step and just seemed to hover at the entrance to the attic. What the hell was he looking at?
His fingers tightening on the butt of his revolver, he was two steps from the top when the faint light from the attic windows illuminated the woman standing on the landing. Swearing, he quickly reholstered his weapon.
“Dammit, Jennifer, what the devil are you doing up here in the dark?” he asked. “I thought someone had broken into the house!”
She whirled to face him and didn’t seem to have the least idea how close he’d come to taking her down like a common crook. “Sam! Thank God you’re here!” Her eyes shining, she grabbed him by the arm and tugged him up beside her. “I want someone else to see this besides me. Look!”
Turning back to the attic, she motioned to the huge shadowy expanse that opened before them like a cavern. Cloaked in murky darkness, there was nothing to see but a few hulking wardrobes that were crowded together in one corner and shrouded in dust covers.
From the glow on her face he could see even in the poor light, Sam knew he was missing something, but for the life of him he didn’t know what. “Okay,” he said in a gruff whisper that wouldn’t float down the stairwell and wake the rest of the house, “I give up. What am I supposed to see? It’s just an attic. Most old houses have them.”
“Just an attic?” She stared up at him amazement. “My God, you really don’t see it, do you?”
Puzzled, Sam glanced back at the obscure shadows that stretched before them. “If you’re talking about something besides a dark attic, then no, I guess I don’t. What am I missing?”
She gazed at the festive scene unfolding before her, a smile curling her mouth. “A ball,” she said huskily. “You know—like something out of Cinderella. There are all theses candles and flowers, and the orchestra in the corner is playing a waltz. Can’t you hear it? It’s wonderful. The women are wearing these incredible hooped dresses that sway when they dance, and the men are all stiff and formal as they hold their partners at just the proper degree of closeness. It’s wonderful.”
She closed her eyes and hummed the melody that only she could hear, her body unconsciously swaying in time. Watching her, hearing nothing but the melody she hummed, seeing nothing but her, Sam only just then realized she was barefoot and wearing nothing but the flannel gown he’d bought her that morning.
He felt heat curl into his gut and knew he had no business being alone with her up there in the attic in the dark. She was decently covered—he could barely see her—but a smart man would have escorted her back to Alice’s apartment before he was tempted to do something stupid. But even as the thought nagged at him, he gave in to an insane desire to pull her into his arms for a waltz only she could hear.
He should have felt like a fool. There were no candles, no lights, no other couples swirling around them. It was just the two of them whirling around the dusty floor in the unlit attic, dipping and swaying to the music of an orchestra that hadn’t played there for a hundred years. If any of the other occupants of the social club’s apartments had chanced upon them, they’d have thought they’d both lost their minds. But if this was insanity, he wanted to drown himself in it. Nothing had ever felt so right in his life.
He was in trouble, but he didn’t care. Not when it seemed like forever since he’d held her. With a murmur of pleasure she melted against him as if there was nowhere else in the world she’d rather be, and just that quickly, any chance he had of keeping his head flew right out the window. She felt like heaven in his arms. Her cheek found the hollow of his shoulder, her breasts nestled against the hard wall of his chest, and her hips sweetly brushed his. Need settled hot and hard in his loins.
And for one heart-stopping moment he could have sworn he heard the haunting strains of a waltz.
He told himself it was nothing more than his imagination.
Something that drifted downriver from one of the restaurants that specialized in romance. Something his mind had conjured up at her suggestion. A fantasy. That was all it co
uld be.
But the woman in his arms was no fantasy. She was soft and sexy and probably naked under her gown. And he wanted her so badly that he could hardly remember a time when just the thought of her hadn’t made him hard. When he whirled with her in his arms and she looked up, laughing, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to lean down and kiss her.
A kiss. Just one. He swore that was all he’d intended. But the second his mouth settled on hers and he tasted the heat of her response, he was intoxicated. The floor could have fallen away beneath his feet and he never would have noticed. Murmuring her name, he tightened his arms around her and lost himself in the sweetness of her.
Her senses swimming, her heart pounding, Jennifer clung to him and tried to remember why she shouldn’t. But his hands were slow and sure, caressing her, claiming her as if he had every right, and she couldn’t think. This was what she wanted, what she’d ached for in the middle of the night when there was a fever under her skin and she couldn’t sleep. Sam kissing her, holding her, sweeping them both into passion without a care to tomorrow. Nothing mattered but this...Sam...the two of them together... finally.
If he’d found a dozen reasons to walk away from her in the past, tonight he couldn’t seem to let her go. Drawing her up on her toes, he wrapped his arms around her as if he would draw her into his very heart, and she gloried in it. Then he kissed her again. Then a third time. Long hot searing kisses that aroused and seduced and mesmerized. And all the while the music, the magic, throbbed in her blood.
Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew she’d lost all reason, but she couldn’t find the strength to care. Unfamiliar yearnings twisted and coiled in her, driving her on. Blindly moving against him, seeking something she couldn’t name, she rubbed her breasts, swollen and sensitive, against the hard wall of his chest, but it only intensified the ache that had lodged low in her belly. Whimpering, she crowded closer.
She couldn’t have said what she needed, but he knew. Fighting the folds of her gown, he dragged up the soft material until it bunched around her waist, then filled his hands with her bare bottom and pulled her tight against his arousal. Her knees buckled, and in the hushed darkness of the attic, her muffled cry echoed to the rooftop.
“Easy, sweetheart,” he soothed thickly, even as his fingers stroked and teased and drove her crazy. “God, your skin’s like silk. I’ve got to touch you, just for a minute....”
Her mind blurring, no longer aware of anything but the liquid fire in her center that burned hotter with every stroke of his fingers, she tugged at his clothes, desperate to touch him as he touched her. “Make love to me,” she moaned. “Please, Sam. I want you to make love to me.”
He groaned and almost lost it right there. But as much as he wanted her, he hadn’t completely taken leave of his senses. She was a virgin, ignorant of men, and didn’t even know what she was asking for. For no other reason than that, he should have found the strength to put her from him. But right from the beginning he hadn’t been able to keep his distance from her, and instead of easing her away and taking a couple of deep breaths to clear his head, he tightened his arms around her.
Every instinct he had urged him to sweep her up and carry her off to his bed. Now. While the world was asleep and they had the night all to themselves. Before she remembered how hard he’d tried to walk away from her. But he had to be able to look himself in the mirror in the morning, and he couldn’t do that if he rushed her into something in the heat of the moment that she wasn’t really ready for.
Drawing back slightly, his eyes met hers in the darkness. “Be sure this is what you want, honey,” he said fiercely. “Because I want you so much now my teeth ache. If I get you in my bed, get you under me, I don’t know how I’d find the strength to let you go if you changed your mind.”
Heat fired her cheeks at his bluntness, but her gaze never flinched from his. “I won’t,” she promised huskily. “It’s what I want.”
“How can you be sure of that when you’ve never made love before?”
If she was surprised that he’d guessed she was a virgin, she didn’t show it. Instead, she took his hand and dared to lift it to her heart. “I know it here,” she said softly, making him suck in a sharp breath. “That’s all I need to know.”
Up until then he’d liked to think he was in control of the passion she stirred in him so effortlessly. But when she cupped his fingers on her breast and looked up at him with such trust in her fathomless green eyes, he knew he’d never been in control, not even in the beginning. She smiled and made him burn. She touched him, sweetly offered herself to him, and she destroyed him. Helpless to resist her, he scooped her up in his arms. “Not here,” he said hoarsely. “I want you in my bed.”
He carried her down the stairs and through the door of his apartment, going straight back to his bedroom without bothering to turn on a single light. Later, he promised himself, he would turn on the bedside lamp and treat himself to the sight of her, but this first time, he couldn’t seem to let go of her long enough to do anything but jerk back the covers and set her down in the moonlight that streamed in through the window to pool in the center of his bed. A split second later he was lowering himself beside her, his arms closing around her as his mouth found hers.
She turned to him and gave him back kiss for kiss, but he felt the tension in her, the nerves that wouldn’t let her completely relax, and suddenly the control he’d thought had deserted him was back. Clamping a lid on the need that clawed at him, he reminded himself that she was an innocent. If he came on to her like a sex-starved maniac, he was going to scare the hell out of her.
Gentling his mouth on hers, he kissed her softly, sweetly, his tongue teasing, stroking, tenderly seducing. When she sighed in pleasure, the sound hardly more than a whisper in the night, all his fine resolves nearly came undone. He wanted her now, naked beneath him, opening to him, taking his aching flesh into her hot, wet, silken depths. But somehow he kept his touch light, his kiss slow and easy, as if he had all the time in the world. And slowly she responded, like a flower in the sun. The tension drained out of her, the stiffness in her muscles melted away, and her hands reached for him, drawing him closer.
“That’s right, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Just relax and let me take care of you. You know I won’t hurt you.”
Deep in her soul, she knew he’d cut off his right arm before he’d let anyone, including himself, harm her. She could trust him, or she never would have let him come anywhere near her. But although she knew the rudimentary facts about making love, it was the little things she didn’t know that made her nervous. Like when did you take your clothes off and what was she supposed to do with her hands? What if she was frigid? How did a woman know something like that about herself if she’d never made love before?
Horrified that she was and he would be terribly disappointed in her, she stiffened. “Oh, God, Sam, what if I’m frigid?”
His mouth twitched, unexpected amusement gleaming in his eyes before he quickly blinked it away. “Trust me, honey, you’re not frigid. You could never respond to me the way you do if you were. So quit worrying, Okay? Everything’s going to be fine.”
Her eyes still troubled, she stared up at him in the darkness. “You’ll tell me if there’s a problem?”
“You’ll be the first to know,” he assured her solemnly, then stopped any further protests with a fierce kiss. He didn’t give her time to worry about disappointing him, but simply set about the business of slowly driving her out of her mind. Tearing his mouth from hers, he kissed his way down her throat while his fingers worked unsuccessfully at the buttons of her gown. Swearing, he gave up in defeat, palmed her breast through the material of her gown, then took her straining nipple into his mouth.
“Sam!”
“I know, sweetheart,” he growled, curling his tongue around her nipple, undeterred by the thin dampened fabric. “It feels good, doesn’t it? It’d feel even better if you unbuttoned those itty-bitty buttons for me. They weren�
��t made for my fumbling hands.”
Caught in the heat of his gaze, her breast throbbing from the wet warmth of his mouth, she lifted trembling fingers to the series of small pearl buttons that marched down the center of her chest. With little effort the buttons slid free one by one. Heat climbing in her cheeks, she slowly parted her gown, baring her breasts, and then his mouth was on her, sucking, and she could hardly bear the pleasure. She moaned and clutched him to her, wanting the moment to never end.
But there was more. Much more. Her head was still spinning when he stripped the gown from her, then tore off his own clothes. As his weight carefully pressed her into the mattress, they were both gloriously naked, and nothing had ever felt so good.
On fire for her, Sam groaned at the feel of her under him. God, he wanted her! Hot and fast, slow and easy, any way he could get her. He wanted to make her cry out at his touch and come apart in his arms. Capturing her hands, he dragged them above her head and anchored them to the mattress with one of his own. In the darkness he saw her eyes widen, felt the shudder of awareness that rippled through her. Then his free hand was sliding down her body, caressing her breasts, measuring the narrowness of her waist, dipping lower to tease and flirt with the soft heated heart of her femininity.
She cried out, startled, her eyes glazed. Swooping down, he took her mouth in a savage kiss, letting her taste the need that licked at him like fire. And all the while, his fingers circled and dipped and gently played with her sensitive flesh, making her gasp and whimper and plead.
Torture. It was the sweetest kind of torture. His own needs raking at him, he groaned as her hips instinctively lifted to his stroking fingers. “That’s it, baby,” he murmured. “Go with it. God, you’re sweet!”