by Dinah McCall
Suddenly starving, she picked it up with both hands and took a big bite.
Sully shook his head and then took a second helping of potato salad. It wasn’t as tasty as his mother’s, but knowing Ginny’s talent for cooking, anything that came already prepared was fine.
“You sunburned a little this afternoon,” Sully said, pointing to her nose.
She nodded as she swallowed.
“I doubt if it will peel, though,” he added. “It’s only a little pink.”
Ginny laid her hamburger down and then dabbed her mouth with her paper napkin. This tiptoeing around each other was getting on her nerves, and it had to stop.
“Sully, stop it.”
Startled, he swallowed, his bite only half-chewed.
“Stop what?”
“This…this…small talk. For God’s sake, surely we’ve been through enough together to get past that.”
Sully laid down his fork and leaned back in his chair. “So the small talk is out, huh?”
“Yes, please,” she said, and absently brushed a crumb off her only dress, thinking to herself that she would have to find a dry cleaner soon or run completely out of clean clothes, before remembering the washer and dryer she’d seen earlier.
“Then what do we discuss? Surely not the incident that put us both in the hospital. And surely you’re not in the mood for me to drag you over the coals again about Montgomery Academy?”
“Well, no, not exactly.”
“Then short of trading stories about our childhoods, which we pretty much covered at the cabin, that leaves sex and board games, and I’m pretty sure we’re out of Monopoly.”
Ginny gulped, but she couldn’t let him get by with this. Not again.
“What do guys talk about when they’re hanging out?” she asked.
“Sports, work, girls and sex.”
She narrowed her eyes in disgust.
“You’re not serious?”
Sully grinned. “No, but it got a rise out of you, didn’t it?”
She glared for all of a second and then began to grin.
“You’re impossible, aren’t you?”
His smile stopped. His voice lowered. “Honey, I’m so easy, it would make your sweet head spin.”
Ginny had a vision of bare sweating bodies before she stood abruptly.
“Where are you going?” Sully asked.
“To get some air.”
“But it’s hotter outside than it is in here.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Ginny muttered, and walked out of the dining room, leaving him to make what he chose of her remark.
Sully started to follow her and then stopped. He’d done it again. Pushed when he should have stayed put. Angrily, he started gathering up their dishes and carrying them into the kitchen. He would wash them later. Even if she didn’t want company, he wasn’t letting her out of his sight.
12
Ginny thought she was alone. One minute she was standing beside the pool, listening to the water lapping at the sides, and the next thing, Sully’s voice was at her ear.
“Come inside with me.”
She turned, looking up at him in the moonlight and wishing she could read his mind.
“Please,” Sully added.
She sighed and then surprised them both by walking into his arms and laying her head against his chest.
“I don’t know how to play this game,” Ginny said. “We crossed a line that I didn’t see until it was too late to go back. Truth is, I’m not sure I would have stopped even then.”
It was instinct that made him hold her, but it was shock that kept him silent. She was baring her soul, and he couldn’t find the guts to answer.
“It’s not hero-worship, either,” she added, looking up at him in the shadows. “Although you’ve twice proven yourself to be mine.”
He shook his head, willing himself to be still, but God help him, he wanted to make love to her there in the moonlight worse than he’d ever wanted anything in his life.
“You care about me, Sully. I know that. But what I don’t know is how much. Is it duty that turns you into my knight in shining armor, or is this nothing more than lust?”
“Hell,” he muttered, wanting to shake her. But he kept remembering the bruises. “This is just like a woman. Always needing to analyze everything.”
“Maybe, and maybe it’s just the reporter in me. Needing to know all the facts before I proceed.”
He didn’t answer, and the pain of his rejection broke her heart, but she would be damned before she’d let him know.
“Sorry,” she said. “I guess I’m out of bounds here, but don’t worry. I’m not going to dissolve into some crying, screaming fit because some man doesn’t want me.”
She pushed herself out of his arms and then suddenly shivered.
“You know what, Sully? You were wrong. About the weather, I mean. It is cooler out here than it is inside. And I’m tired. Really tired. I’m going to go to bed now, and when we wake up in the morning, this is going to be nothing more than a bad dream.”
He heard tears in her voice, and they were his undoing. Right or wrong, he’d reached the limit of his endurance.
“Wait.”
The urgency in his voice made her stop, but she couldn’t bring herself to turn and face him.
“What?” she muttered.
“You think I don’t want you? Lady, I lie awake nights thinking of all the ways I want to make love to you. I dream of being so deep inside you that it hurts to pull out, and of watching your eyes lose focus right before you come. And it’s not duty, and it’s not lust. I don’t know what to call it, but I’ll spend the rest of my life with your face in my mind.” He touched the back of her head, fisting a handful of her dark, silky hair and then letting it go. “You want truth? I’ll give you truth. I’m afraid to touch you. I’m scared sick that if I do, you’ll flash back to what happened between you and Carney Auger, that if I take you in my arms, the only man you’ll see is him.”
Ginny turned, shock in her voice. “Oh, Sully, no. Never that. Never with you. I slept in your arms, remember? You held me in the hospital, and when I woke up that next morning, it was with deep regret that things weren’t different. Many times I had thought of what that would be like—to wake up beside you, I mean. I’d fully expected we would have made love that…that night. And afterward…I didn’t want to be battered and ugly and half out of my mind.”
Her words slid through his mind like a knife, cutting through defenses he didn’t know he had. Without thinking, he pulled her to him, and when her arms slipped around his waist, he knew he was gone.
“Ginny, you’re so beautiful. What you survived was ugly—not you.”
She looked up at him there, his features barely evident in the dark desert night. As she stood there, it dawned on her that she didn’t need to see him to know the truth. It was in the tone of his voice and the tenderness of his touch.
She sighed and then dropped her chin, resting her forehead against his chest.
“So…?”
Sully had to smile. Ginny was like a dog with a bone.
“So I’m admitting there’s something real between us. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” he muttered. “Like slitting my own throat before I make a bigger ass of myself?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, they stood for a moment, staring intently at each other’s faces.
“There’s a part of me that’s afraid to let go and trust you all the way. Oh…I know you’ll take care of me physically without fail, but it’s my heart that’s in danger, and right now, I need to believe that you’re telling me the truth.”
“Damn it, Ginny, I don’t know what else to—”
“Wait,” she begged, and put a silencing finger against his lips. “What I’m trying to say is…if this is only an illusion—if you’re just telling me what you think I needed to hear—I don’t want to know.”
Hurt and angr
y, Sully struggled with the urge to walk away, but there was a part of him that almost understood. She’d already lost so much. And she was still in danger. It wasn’t the time to give away the only thing she had left of her own—her heart.
“I’m going to ask you again,” he said. “Come back inside.”
“Yes, I think it’s time.”
Moonlight lay across the floor in broken pieces as Sully undressed her. Ginny knew in her mind what was about to transpire, but it seemed as if she were watching herself from a distance. Nothing seemed real. Her dress lay like a puddle of ink upon the floor, the dark, navy blue color lost among the shadows. Sully’s breath was warm against her face as he reached around her back and unfastened her bra. The coolness of the air-conditioned room hardened her nipples, bringing them to instant attention, as if begging to be touched.
So he did.
She inhaled sharply as his tongue encircled a pouting peak. When he moved to the other one and caught it in his teeth, she pulled him closer, wanting more of the pleasure and the pain. But he didn’t linger there. It wasn’t time. As she was struggling to catch her breath, his hands slid around her back and then beneath her panties, cupping her hips and then stripping her bare.
Again his head dipped as he sought out the lobe of her ear, drawing it into his mouth, laving the tip with his tongue, then letting her go. The cool air hit the place where the warmth of his mouth had been, and she shivered. Then he picked her up and laid her down in the middle of his bed, moving on to the next step of the seduction.
She watched him, almost objectively, as he began to undress. Piece by piece, he removed his clothing, revealing a broad chest and flat belly, then long, muscled legs. Even before he took off his briefs, she could tell he was aroused, and yet when he was totally nude, she was stunned by his size.
He heard her gasp and looked down.
“I won’t hurt you.”
“It isn’t that.”
“Are you afraid? All you have to do is say no and I’m gone.”
“No…not of that. Not what you mean.”
“Then what?” Sully asked.
“I want this—so much. I want it to matter to you as much as it does me.”
“Why do I sense there’s a ‘but’?”
“Don’t take this wrong.”
He sighed. “Ginny, I’m about as defenseless as a man can be. Say what you have to say. You’ll see my reaction, good or bad.”
“This first time…I don’t know how I’ll be. But I need it to take away the bad memories. Can you do that for me? Can you forgive me if I hesitate—if I flinch or start to cry? Will you make love to me anyway? I need to close my eyes and see something besides that man’s face above me.”
His hands were shaking as he lay down beside her. Please, God, don’t let me do anything wrong. When he brushed his hand across the flat of her belly, she flinched.
“Sully, I—”
“Shhh. Don’t talk. Just feel. If it helps, close your eyes, baby. And whatever you do, for God’s sake, remember it’s me.”
Tears rolled from the corners of her eyes onto her pillow. He rose up on one elbow and kissed them away. Then he began a journey across Ginny that neither one would ever forget.
He crawled to the end of the bed and sat down, then took one of her feet into his hands and began to rub. Gently he stroked the delicate arch, then moved toward the back of her heel and across her ankle, kneading away all her stress.
Her toes began to tingle, and she began to relax. When he took the second foot into his lap, she was ready, anticipating the aches he was willing to rub away. Somewhere within the time when he moved up to her legs, she knew it was going to be okay. This total acceptance of his hands on her body had not been easy, and yet it was there. He was moving up the length of her legs now with those magical hands, up the backs of her calves, then her thighs. Always stroking, sometimes pressing his thumbs into hard, knotted muscles, mixing a breathless sort of pain with the bone-melting pleasure. When his thumbs rested at the juncture of her thighs, she knew the focus of his journey. The urge to part her legs for him was startling. But to her shock, he only brushed across the spot with the backs of his hands and then moved up to her belly.
Lightly now, ever conscious of the bruises, his hands skimmed across the surface of her skin, until she felt like a guitar string that had been tuned too tight. When he palmed her breasts and then rolled the nubs between his fingers, her hips arched up from the bed in reflex. She began to moan, clutching at his arms and then his hands.
“Not yet, baby. Not yet,” she heard him whisper.
Reluctantly, she dug her fingers into the mattress instead.
Sully was almost at the end of his own endurance, and yet he couldn’t—wouldn’t—take his pleasure until he knew it would be hers, too. Her breath was hot against his face as he lowered his head, capturing her mouth with his own, swallowing her short, gasping moans. When she dug her fingers through his hair and caught his lower lip between her teeth, he knew it was time.
He moved swiftly, straddling her legs, yet ever careful not to let his weight down upon her. His hands were on her thighs again, moving up, then up some more. Thick, dark curls tangled around his fingers as he felt for the core of her. This was where pleasure began and ended. This would tell the tale.
“Ginny, open your eyes.”
As her eyelids came up, he began to rub. Whatever panic she might have felt at seeing him above her was lost in the pleasure that she felt. He heard her sigh, then moan, and still he rubbed—around and around in a perpetual motion of ecstasy. When she opened her legs farther, he moved deeper, and when she inadvertently arched off the bed, he knew he was home.
He looked up at her face. Her eyes were closed again, and she was lost to herself and at the mercy of his hands. Almost out of his mind with the need to be in her, he had to move now before it was too late.
“Baby…”
It was the plea in his voice that brought her back from where she’d been. She opened her eyes just as he shifted position. She had a moment’s impression of him coming down and then inside her, filling her, pushing into her deeply.
“Look at me. Look at me.”
The urgency in his voice was unmistakable. She looked, and for a second, time seemed to stand still. Her body was quivering on the brink of an orgasm with no end. His face was dark, his muscles jerking as he held himself above her, unwilling to burden her with his weight until she knew that it was him. But she could feel him deep inside her, pulsing, pushing, and dear God, she needed more. Without words, she encircled his neck and pulled him down to meet her.
It was all that he needed to know.
He thrust himself the rest of the way in, and when she arched up to meet him, he began to move.
She came within seconds as a gut-wrenching moan slipped out from between her teeth, and he could feel the constriction of her muscles as the ripples fanned throughout. She was hot and wet, and he went out of his mind.
The digital clock registered a little after four in the morning when Ginny woke. She needed to go to the bathroom, but unwinding herself from Sully’s arms without waking him was going to be impossible.
“Sully, I need to get up.”
He was awake instantly. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. I just need to go to the bathroom.”
“Okay.”
He unwound himself and then watched the reflection of the fading moonlight upon her body as she walked across the floor. Once she was gone, he rolled over on his belly and closed his eyes, but the knowledge that had accompanied him into sleep was still there. He was in love with her—pure and simple—and it had nothing to do with sex. Oh sure, that had been something out of a teenager’s dream. But he’d never made love and been in love before, and the combination had been something close to nuclear. His protective instincts were in overdrive, competing with his libido for dominance. He didn’t know whether to put her on a pedestal or drag her off the damned thing and use it for a
pillow while they made mad, crazy love.
When he heard her coming back to bed, he rolled onto his side and opened his arms. She came willingly, laying her head on his arm and using his chest as a resting place for her arm. Within seconds she was fast asleep. He lay there without moving as his heart swelled inside his chest.
So this was what love felt like. Damn. If it was so good, then why was he so scared?
The wind had come up after dark, a portent of a change in the weather. Lucy hoped it would rain. Her flowers were drooping out in their beds, and the grass was beginning to turn. She made a mental note to find the sprinkler tomorrow and set it in place. It wouldn’t do for Emile to come home to imperfection.
She sat at her desk, absently answering the bits and pieces of personal mail she had received the past week, but the joy she usually got from such tasks wasn’t there. She kept thinking of Phillip. He’d changed so much over the past two years. Once he’d been so amenable, willing to help her without question. This ugly side of him was more than troubling. There had even been times when she had actually been afraid. She scoffed to herself, then shook her head. How foolish. Imagine, being frightened of your very own child. It was ludicrous.
She glanced at the clock as she put the stamp on the last letter. It was time. Phillip would be asleep by now. She’d watched him taking a sleeping pill when she’d turned down his bed. Normally she would have questioned him as to the wisdom of something that drastic, but it seemed to fall in with her plans. Her steps were light as she hurried down the hallway with the tape recorder clutched to her chest. Oh, Emile would be proud of her if he knew the initiative she was taking. And it would work. It had to. Nothing must interfere with the rise of her husband’s star, not even the troubles of their only son.
She held her breath as she peeked into the room. Phillip was lying on his side with his back to the door. The steady rise and fall of his shoulder, along with the occasional snore, was evidence enough for her to proceed. Slipping off her shoes at the door, she proceeded barefoot across the room, then knelt beside his bed and carefully pushed the tape recorder beneath the bed skirt. The sound had already been adjusted, yet she would wait long enough to make certain it wasn’t something that would awaken him. The tape was, after all, designed to appeal to the subliminal mind.