Never Trust A Lady

by Kathleen Creighton

  “Is it?” she said gently. “How?”

  He couldn’t for the life of him think how to answer her. He only knew it was different. It was the reasons why, the possibilities, that terrified him. And the fear kept him silent.

  After a moment, she went on in that same gentle tone, “We’re both adults, Tom. And we’ve been adults long enough to have collected quite a bit of emotional baggage. Things are a lot more complicated now than they were when we were kids.” Her smile flickered and went out. “It’s occurred to me that maybe I’m the one who’s asking too much, to think there could even be such a thing as love-I mean, you know, falling in love-for people our age.”

  “Dammit, Carlysle-” He stopped midsentence. He wasn’t sure why it had occurred to him to refute what she’d said; a week ago, if you’d asked him, he’d probably have agreed with her. Hell, he supposed he still did. Sure he did. One to a customer, and he’d already had his.

  Frustrated and off balance, he tossed his jacket in the general direction of a chair. It slid to the floor, landing with a faint clunk.

  Guilt jolted him. But Jane didn’t seem to have noticed, and he had more pressing things to think about just then. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten why he was there in the first place, or the importance of the game he was in, or what was at stake. But it wasn’t his game anymore, it was the FBI’s, and they had all bases covered. In a matter of hours, Jarek Singh’s key and Loizeau’s killer would both be in custody, and all that would be left for Hawk to do was paperwork.

  Even what had become his own personal stake-getting Jane cleared of any suspicion of complicity in the whole affair-had lost its sense of urgency. Being as certain of her innocence as he was that the sun would rise tomorrow, and just as certain that the shards in his jacket pocket would prove that beyond any doubt, he didn’t see that there was any particular rush to get the evidence back to the FBI labs. Tomorrow would do fine. Tonight was for…

  What? Suddenly he wasn’t sure exactly what he was really doing there, or what was going to happen. He just had a vague, jumpy idea it might be something important.

  He knew what he wanted to do more than anything at that moment, which was haul Jane into his arms, touch her the way he’d been touching her out there in the car and kiss her until neither of them could stand. Sensing it wasn’t the best moment to do so, he took out his cigarettes instead.

  He frowned as he lit one, thinking about what she’d just said about love, afraid that with the electricity still so intense and dangerous between them, if he touched her the way he wanted to right now he might appear to be saying things he didn’t mean, things he wasn’t ready to say. He told himself he had to be careful with this woman. He couldn’t risk misunderstandings. He told himself he’d been honest with her up to now-about his feelings, anyway-and he didn’t intend to start lying at this stage of the game.

  It occurred to him that he wished she’d be as honest with him.

  Suddenly frustrated beyond bearing, he stuck a cigarette between his lips and muttered furiously around it, “Sometimes I can’t figure you out, you know that?”

  She gave a small, surprised laugh and leaned to snag the ashtray and move it closer to him, an automatic gesture of consideration and courtesy, and so completely typical of her. “I know women who’d take that as a compliment,” she said lightly, then frowned. “I don’t know why. I’ve always wanted more than anything to be understood.”

  He snatched the ashtray from her and stubbed out his barely touched cigarette, then pushed it away, took her by the shoulders and pulled her closer, but not yet into his arms. Caught by surprise, she put her hands on his chest, the fingers of one still curled around the handle of the soup spoon. He could see her mouth pop open as she stared at it, and he felt her body vibrate with deep-down-inside tremors.

  He removed the spoon from her fingers and tossed it into the sink, wincing at the clatter. Then, cupping her jaw and chin with one hand, he tilted her face upward. “Look at me,” he commanded. She did, trustingly, lifting those sea-gray eyes to his. And he felt as if the ocean were rising up to meet him.

  “I always know what you’re feeling,” he said, wondering why his tongue felt thick. He felt woozy…dizzy, as if riding a heavy swell-and he’d never been one to get seasick. “Your eyes tell me. They show everything. Did you know that?”

  He watched a little pleat of lines appear between her eyebrows, and felt her pulse hammer against his palm. His pulse was in his throat.

  “I don’t know-sometimes you seem so damn frank and open it scares me. Hell, I never know what’s going to come out of your mouth. And then sometimes, I look in your eyes and what I’m seeing doesn’t match what I’m hearing.” He paused, staring down at her as if he might see inside her soul if he only looked hard enough. It was like trying to see the bottom of the ocean. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking, dammit!”

  Dear God, thought Jane as a new and heretofore unknown kind of fear shivered and sparkled like crystal dust just beneath her skin. This man has known me for a matter of days, and already he knows what David never could figure out in more than twenty-one years.

  Was this what it would be like? Intimacy? To be one of a couple, wholly and completely with someone…did that mean she’d have to learn to share her innermost thoughts? Oh, surely not all her thoughts. But at least, not to lie about her feelings? Her true feelings…

  Oh, what a terrifying thing! Imagine having the courage to let someone know when you felt angry, or hurt, or disappointed, or just plain out-of-sorts. Imagine trusting someone enough to let yourself be cranky and disagreeable and moody in his presence, trusting that he would still love you in spite of it. Imagine not having to be nice all the time. Imagine being allowed to have flaws. Imagine not having to be perfect in order to be loved. Imagine…

  A tear appalled her by slipping from the corner of one eye and rolling down to puddle in the crack between her cheek and Tom’s fingers.

  “Don’t!” he cried sharply, and smeared the moisture across her hot cheek with his fingers as if trying to make it disappear.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, dropping her lashes across the other tears that wanted to follow the first. “It’s just, you know, emotions…”

  The growl he gave had more frustration in it than lust, but his lips, when they touched hers, were unexpectedly gentle. Incredibly sweet. Unbelievably wonderful. A sigh shivered through her as for a moment-just a moment-she seemed to hang suspended in a fragile, crystalline bubble of happiness, happiness so pure and rare it felt like shimmers inside her, and ran along her skin like the cold-hot prickle of a sparkler’s shower on the Fourth of July.

  If this is all there is to be, she thought-and for that moment believed-then I will settle for this. And be happy.

  Her hands crept around his neck and her head relaxed into the cradle of his hand, and she sighed as though she’d found something for which she’d been searching a very long time. As she had.

  “You must know what I’m thinking now,” she whispered when his lips left hers to travel upward across her cheek, tasting the dampness her tear had left there.

  “I know what you’re feeling,” he corrected, murmuring the words across her eyelid like the tiniest of caresses. “That’s all.”

  Drunkenly she mumbled. “Right now it’s the same thing anyway… I can’t think.” And she wished-oh, how she wished-that it were true.

  She never knew how they got from the kitchen to her bedroom; certainly Tom didn’t sweep her into his arms. Rhett Butler-like, and carry her-she’d have been mortified if he had-but she had no recollection of walking down a darkened hallway, no awareness of sidestepping the living-room furniture or squeezing entwined through doorways. It was only when Tom turned on the light in her bedroom that the deep, enveloping fog of desire lifted long enough for her to make an inarticulate sound of protest. He instantly turned it off again.

  On wobbly legs she moved through the semidarkness to the bed, tossed pillows onto the floor and fold
ed back the comforter. Separated from him, she felt cold, isolated, off balance, as if she’d stepped onto the deck of a ship in a storm. When she felt his hands on her waist and the warm and solid bulkhead of his body there behind her, her relief was so profound she almost whimpered.

  “Easy,” Hawk murmured as he turned her, wondering why she was shivering when it wasn’t cold in the room.

  He was glad of that; he wanted very much to see her while he made love to her, and was glad not to have to resort to huddling under the covers like Puritans. To that end, he kissed her until he felt her relax and her shivers subside and her knees begin to buckle, then leaned over to turn on the lamp beside the bed.

  And as before when he did that, she uttered a little yelp of protest. Only this time, he ignored it, left the light on and went back to doing what he’d been doing so pleasurably before.

  “Have a heart,” she whispered, clutching his shoulders and laughing weakly as he reached under her tunic to stroke the sides of her waist.

  “Come on,” he teased, pulling her torso against his and at the same time bending her backward a little, nibbling the side of her neck, delighting at the way her body moved in his hands, the way her muscles flexed and tightened, supple as a green willow. “You don’t mean to tell me you’re embarrassed…” Her shaky little half laugh confirmed it. Still not believing she was serious, he pulled back and looked at her, smiling himself, expecting to see a teasing light in her eyes. “Carlysle?”

  But she wouldn’t let him see her eyes, and he wondered if it was because of what he’d told her, that he could read her feelings in them.

  “Well, of course I am,” she murmured, sounding a little testy, licking her lips as if she could taste him still. “I told you, it’s been more than five years…and before that there was only…” She paused, drew a breath and blurted out, “You’re only the second man who’s ever seen this body, not counting obstetricians, and, well…”

  That tenderness that surprised him every now and then, and that unnerved him so whenever it appeared, was lurking about again, playing a little goblin-game with his emotions. He fought it, keeping his frown in place as he said solemnly, in the best John Wayne imitation he could muster, “Well, ma’am, from what I’ve been able to see of it, it looks like a damn fine body to me.”

  She made a disparaging sound, half snort, half whimper. “It’s forty-five years old, and looks every year of it.”

  God help me, he thought, suddenly remembering what she’d said to him about people collecting baggage, and about nothing being as simple now as it was when they were young. Nothing about this woman was simple, that was for sure, and neither was the way he felt about her. Where in the hell was good ol’ lust when he needed it?

  You’ve been with other women, she’d said-what’s one more? But he’d never felt like this, not under these circumstances, anyway. He felt protective, strong, but a little bit awed and humble, too, as if he was taking part in something…special. Out-of-the-ordinary. And there was that word again: Important.

  Even the first time with Jenny hadn’t felt like this-but he’d been a virgin then, himself, and Jen, well, Jen had always been so sure of herself, so sure of him. In some strange way, he thought, Jane seemed younger now than Jenny had then.

  He felt her shudder when he began, slowly, to lift her tunic, but she didn’t stop him, and he pulled it over her head and let it drop to the floor. Her hands fluttered nervously to the center clasp of her bra, but he gently pushed them aside and put his there instead. And then, instead of unhooking it immediately, he leaned down and kissed her a long, slow time, until her breathing grew uneven and she had to reach for him to keep from falling.

  And still he didn’t free her breasts from that last bastion of modesty and protection, but began to rub the nipples through the lacy fabric that covered them, until he could feel them grow hard and tender, and chafe against that restriction. Until her breaths became tiny pants and whimpers that he took from her lips like sips of warm brandy.

  He knew she would have torn off the rest of her clothes then herself, if he’d let her. But now, perversely, he denied her, holding her captive with his mouth and hands, and when she finally tore her mouth free and clung to him, incoherently gasping, instead of undressing, he began to talk to her. Blowing the words past the sensitive channels of her ear so that every nerve ending shivered to attention, he began to tell her about how he’d spent most of his adult life in Europe, where people have different attitudes toward women and age.

  “Someone told me once…” Someone… He didn’t tell her just then about Ava, the mistress of a notorious drug kingpin with whom he’d had a brief but mutually profitable liaison, and who, last he’d heard, was enjoying a comfortable retirement in Morocco while the kingpin was serving a life sentence in a Gibraltar prison. But he knew he would…someday. Someday. And that, in itself, was a revelation.

  For now, though, he told her what Ava had said to him once, on a warm summer day in Tuscany. “A woman’s body is a receptacle, caro mio…in which she collects life’s pleasures and experiences. And the more she collects, the more of life she experiences, the more she is able to give and receive pleasure…”

  “In other words,” Jane gasped. “I’m not getting older, I’m getting better?”

  “You got it.” He heard her breath catch as he finally released the catch on her bra. Slowly, he drew the halves apart, pushed the straps over her shoulders and down, until the thing fell of its own accord. Then he didn’t say a word, just looked at her, watching her face until he saw her lips soften in a smile…sleepy, seductive and wholly female.

  “What are you waiting for?” she said huskily, licking her lips. “This receptacle has got some catching up to do.”

  He laughed then, and he’d never known laughter to feel so good.

  She’d wanted to make him smile, she remembered, the first time she’d ever set eyes on him. But she hadn’t known it would feel like this to look at him, full to bursting with wonder, joy and fear. Stunned, she lifted a hand to touch his lips with just the tips of her fingers, awed by the firm satiny warmth of them, hardly able to believe those same lips still bore the glaze of moisture from her own mouth, and that she could still taste him on her own tongue.

  It was with a sense of shock that she realized she’d felt this same confusing mix of happiness and terror twice before, when she’d first gazed upon the faces of her newborn daughters, first tremulously touched the velvety fuzz on their heads with an awestruck finger. Love. No gentle emotion, this. No hearts-and-flowers and giddy birds tying ribbons into lovers’ knots. This was something fierce and frightening, powerful and ungovernable. Not a choice at all, but a force of nature.

  “Tom,” she cried, “I-” But she stopped herself in time, and didn’t say it out loud.

  Instead, she gulped and said, “Hey, when do I get to see your-” And stopped again.

  “-My forty-five-year-old body?” he finished for her with such gallantry her heart, if it hadn’t already, melted completely. Grinning, he held out his arms. “Feel free…”

  Feel free. Oh, she wanted to, more than anything. She wanted to feel, to experience, to relish and enjoy, to lose herself in almost forgotten sensations, languish in unimagined pleasure. But it was all so new, and that she hadn’t expected. Her mind was so busy discovering, sorting, comparing, questioning, wondering… She didn’t want to think at all, and instead she was overwhelmed with thoughts.

  Have I ever done this before? she wondered as she lifted Tom’s sweater and helped him push it up and over his head, clumsily, so that he emerged tousled and grinning, like a mischievous boy. She couldn’t remember, and it didn’t seem likely she would have. Unwilling to relinquish even that much control, David had always preferred to undress himself. Should she tell Tom that? And would he believe her if she did?

  He is beautiful. she thought as she tugged his soft white T-shirt free of his trousers and skimmed it upward, running her hands over the almost geometric symmetr
y of his abdominal muscles, brushing the tickly thicket of chest hair with her arms and biting her lips to keep from following her impulse to bury her face in it. Beautiful…just as I imagined he’d be. Should she tell him so? Would she sound like a silly, besotted girl if she did?

  And all the while, he was cradling the weight of her breasts in his hands, teasing and tormenting the nipples with his fingers until they hardened to the point of hutting-a good hurt, a delicious hurt, a tugging she could feel deep down inside-and all she wanted to do was close her eyes and sink into that glorious sensation and forget everything in the world but his hands…his mouth…his body.

  This is worse than being a virgin, she thought, swaying drunkenly into his hands, trying not to moan at his touch. I should be better at this…I have no excuses for being so scared.

  “Hey, look at me,” Tom said in his familiar gravelly murmur, his breath pouring like liquid sunlight over her eyelids. She tried, but her eyes wouldn’t focus, and she saw him only in a shimmering blur. From inside it his voice came, softer than she’d ever heard it, soft as the voices of bees on lazy summer afternoons. “You are beautiful, but that’s not the reason I wanted the light on. The part of you I really want to see is your eyes…”

  She felt his hands moving, fanning down her rib cage to the sensitive sides of her waist She sucked in air when his fingers feathered across her belly, dipped under the elastic waistband of her leggings and eased them gently over her hips. With his hands firmly cupping her bottom, he paused and murmured, “Your turn…”

  She struggled with his belt buckle, her fingers nerveless and stiff as wire. It parted more of its own accord, she thought, or some kind of miracle, perhaps, than from anything she’d done. But when she slipped her hands inside his waistband, his skin felt warm and smooth, like silk. She wanted desperately to kiss him there. Do I dare? she thought. Would it be too bold?

  “Look at me,” he said more insistently now. “You look scared. Tell me what you’re thinking.”