The Woman Who Wasn't There

by Marie Ferrarella

  Suspicious to the end, he thought with a slight shake of his head.

  “It’s a very weak wine, Delene. If you can get drunk on that, you have no tolerance for alcohol.” He stared into her eyes. “And I have a deep suspicion that your tolerance is considerable.”

  She wasn’t about to sink into those blue eyes of his. She wasn’t. “Why? Because I suffer fools well?”

  He was on to her. She became sharp tongued when she felt vulnerable. Something protective inside of him stirred. He wanted to chase away whatever demons haunted her.

  “No, because you work so hard at being a ‘tough broad.’ Holding your liquor just goes with the image.” He appraised her for a long moment, deliberately stretching it out. She was softer tonight, more feminine despite the so-called “point” of the evening. His voice softened just a little as he burrowed into her personal space. “Someone threaten your boundaries before, Delene?”

  Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “No personal questions.”

  Yes, he was definitely beginning to see through her. “Are there ground rules for tonight?”

  Damn it, Cavanaugh was pushing his way into her space. And now she wasn’t quite as sure about all this as she’d been even thirty minutes ago, when she’d begun to doubt the wisdom of her actions.

  Delene scrambled to reestablish the boundaries around her. “There are ground rules for everything.”

  He cupped her face in his hands as an excitement began to mount within him. He heard her catch her breath. His excitement heightened further still. “Maybe you’d better go over them,” he coaxed.

  How could she suddenly feel as if she was short of breath? They hadn’t done anything yet. Yet it seemed difficult to drag sufficient air into her lungs. Worse, her head began to spin.

  The moment his lips whispered along her cheek, Delene swore she could feel something begin to dissolve inside her.

  It took everything she had not to melt into him. She clenched her hands at her sides. “There’s no need for foreplay,” she told him, trying desperately to sound unaffected.

  “There’s always a need for foreplay.”

  His breath skimmed along her skin as he answered.

  Anticipation roared through her veins.

  Idiot, what were you thinking? she mocked herself.

  She had not been with a man in five years. Russell had been her first lover. Her only lover. Lovemaking, sex—all that was an episode of her life she’d thought she was through with when she’d escaped and dissolved her nightmare of a marriage. When she’d put forth her invitation to Troy, she’d been certain that she could go through this with nothing more than a physical reaction. But now she was no longer so certain. Not certain at all.

  Because strange things were going on inside of her. Cleaving to what he was doing. Rallying and cheering. And wanting more. So much more.

  But she was nothing if not a fighter. Willing her hands to remain still at her side, she murmured, “You’re trying to seduce me.”

  He raised his head from the tender hollow of her throat to look at her. The expression in his eyes was wickedly delicious. She felt herself melting a little more.

  “How’m I doing?” he asked softly.

  Spectacularly.

  The single word response throbbed through her brain. Her hands had mutinied against her. She realized that she was holding on to his arms now. Just when had that happened?

  Probably when she felt her knees giving out. “You don’t have to do this.” She forced the words out with effort. “I already said I’d have sex with you.”

  Troy laid a finger to her lips, his eyes on hers. If she didn’t know better, she would have said where he’d touched had just burst into flame. “Shh. I like doing things my own way.”

  Desperation rose another notch inside her. Damn it, she’d wanted to have sex with him, to discharge whatever was humming inside of her. What he was doing wasn’t discharging her urge. He was fanning the flames, making them stretch and grow so that she was in danger of burning up.

  Things were happening inside of her, scrambling for high ground as wide, all-encompassing want and need continued to grow, threatened to obliterate her.

  He was taking the last shred of control away for her. Any second now, she was going to be on the floor, a puddle of submission.

  The very last thing she wanted.

  Never again did she want to hand control over her to a man. This had to stop. Had to.

  The woman in his arms seemed to snap to attention. He could have sworn he’d heard her telepathically communicate the word Geronimo, forwarding it to his brain.

  The next moment, she’d wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips against his.

  Hard.

  He hadn’t planned on kissing her mouth, yet. He had wanted to work his way up to it, setting the stage for the pleasurable encounter because he believed that making love to a woman wasn’t just the interlocking of sexual organs. That was too easy. You could make love to a woman with your eyes, with your hands, with every fiber of your being. Which was exactly what he had intended on doing with Delene.

  But Delene had broadsided him. She had caused a power surge inside of him that came out of left field and in its wake had left him shaken and wanting. Not to mention scorched.

  Desire for this woman had existed from the very first, but he’d just assumed he could manage it, enjoy and act upon it when he chose the moment. But suddenly, when she’d kissed him with feeling, the mental blueprints he’d laid out had gone up in flames. Instead, he found himself in the grip of something that took his very breath away, an occurrence that had never happened.

  That excited him beyond description.

  It was as if he’d gotten his foot caught in the stirrup of a galloping horse. He couldn’t even run to keep up.

  So, in a last-ditch effort to regain control, Troy said the first thing that popped into his mind. “Whoa, take it easy.” He drew his head back. His hands lightly gripped her shoulders to keep her in place. “We have all night.”

  No, no they didn’t, she thought urgently. She didn’t. She had to get in front of this before it ran her down and left her flatter than the long white dividing line on the highway. He was sweeping her away, out to sea without a twig to hang on to, and she had to stop it, had to be the one in charge. If she wasn’t, she had this awful feeling she was doomed.

  The problem was, the more she tried to take control, the more quickly she lost it, because what she attempted to do to him was backfiring and taking her along for the ride.

  The more she kissed Troy, the more she wanted to kiss him. The more she wanted him to kiss her. To take her. The more she wanted to grab on to this feeling that coursed through her veins, making her insane. It was like stumbling upon a ravenous hunger. A hunger that threatened to have her go up in smoke if she didn’t satiate it.

  He couldn’t recognize himself, didn’t want to waste the time trying. All he knew was that Delene had unleashed myriad intense sensations through him, intense sensations he was determined to enjoy. And to introduce her to.

  Her fingers scrambled over his body, tugging at his shirt, tearing the buttons from the holes that kept them in place. The moment she was finished, he flung his shirt off, even as he began to feel for the zipper at the back of her dress. Finding it, he quickly pulled it down to its base.

  Her dress fell from her body like a sigh.

  Or maybe the sigh came from him. Again, there was no time to wonder, only time to act.

  He felt—rather than saw—the delicate lingerie she had on. The soft, silken texture complemented the silken skin he discovered beneath. He had to hold himself in check not to rip the garments from her. The desire for speed, for urgency was something new. A first.

  The thought occurred to him distantly, because not even his first time had been fueled with this kind of energy, this kind of desire.

  He coaxed the material from her body and sensed her heat even as she shivered against him, nude. Her finge
rs still frantically worked away at the remainder of his clothing, tugging on his belt. A frustrated sound echoed against his mouth.

  Troy struggled to keep his smile from emerging, knowing she’d think he was laughing at her when nothing was further from the truth. Delight was responsible for the amused expression attempting even now to surface.

  Stilling the fingers that were making him quiver with anticipation, Troy undid his belt for her, was about to pull the short zipper down when he felt her hands usurping his. Felt her fingertips moving the metal teeth apart little by little.

  Felt her touching him through the layers that still remained between them. He was ready for her.

  She’d wrenched control from his hands. But for Troy, it wasn’t about control, had never been about control. But it had turned into a matter of not getting swept away in the undertow.

  Urgently she pressed her body against his. An indistinguishable sound escaped her lips as she savored the heat traveling up and down every inch of her, exuding from every pore of her body. And from his.

  Delene stifled a cry as he swept his hands over her, caressing her body softly. Possessively. She twisted and turned against him, wanting him inside of her. Wanting to reach the climax that now seemed like almost a dream to her.

  It had been five years.

  Five long years. At the touch of his clever hands, hands that seemed to prime her at every pass, her body had slipped out of its coma. It left her now with an insatiable need to feel the surge, the thrill of lovemaking. She felt him hard against her. Felt his heat transferring itself to her. Felt his fingers opening the clasp at her back.

  The black bra she’d chosen so carefully only a short while ago was now on the floor, beside her dress. Beside her sanity.

  Slick and damp, desperate for a release, she felt herself being lifted into the air, then deposited on her bed. Somehow his lips never left hers, never broke contact. He was over her, blocking out the rest of the world. She didn’t care. She arched against him.

  Ready. Waiting.

  But rather than take her, rather than enter and for a moment lose himself within her, Troy gathered her to him and continued kissing her. Stealing the very air from her lungs.

  Just when she was certain she wasn’t going to breathe again, his lips left hers, traveling along her damp skin, setting every inch of her on fire each place they touched.

  She could hear him breathing. He was as short of breath as she was. Somehow that was comforting. But not nearly as comforting as having him.

  As being one with him.

  Delene tried to reach for him, but instead of being able to draw Troy up, he’d moved lower along her body, slowly forging a path down to her core as she wriggled beneath him.

  With short, staccato movements, his tongue dampened the hollow of her belly. And then, suddenly, there were explosions going off in her veins. Reaching the very center of her sexuality, Troy brought her blood up to almost its boiling point. Moaning, saying things she couldn’t even repeat, she felt his tongue caressing her in ways that Russell had never even attempted.

  And wild sparks consumed her until she tottered on the very brink of exhaustion. Wanting more. Afraid that if there was more, she wouldn’t be able to gather herself back up again.

  Depleted, her lungs ached. She was almost unable to draw in a breath as she felt Troy finally slide his body up over her.

  The quickening in her loins surprised her. The way he gently framed her face again even more so.

  “Open your eyes for me, Delene.” At first she thought she imagined the words, but then she knew he was saying them to her. Only then did she realize that her eyes had been squeezed shut this whole time. Squeezed shut as the whirlpool sucked her deeper into its vortex.

  When she did as he asked, she expected to see that same look she’d seen on Russell’s face. The one that fairly crowed with superiority. The one that said he literally owned her.

  Instead she saw something akin to awed tenderness in Troy’s eyes. A lump materialized in her throat.

  He linked his hands with hers, as if they were one in this.

  Troy had no need to move her legs apart, she was waiting for him. Ready and so eager, it was beyond her ability to reason it out.

  “Now,” she cried as pulses throbbed through her, begging for one last release. One last surge. “Now.”

  His smile went straight to the heart of her, even as she desperately tried to deflect it. “I never argue with a lady.”

  Troy slipped into her. Not plunged the way Russell had, as if it were an attack, as if he needed one more way to establish his dominance over her, but slipped inside gently. He began the rhythmic dance slowly and only stepped up the tempo with each pass.

  But when she began to move feverishly against him, all thoughts of a slow progression were cast aside. He had no choice but to hurry to keep up. Because he didn’t want her reaching the summit without him.

  She didn’t.

  They came there together.

  * * *

  Chapter 12

  Troy kept his hands linked with hers a moment longer, absorbing the warmth of her body, letting it mingle with his. The euphoria slowly slipped away as the world drew back into focus. He could still feel his heart pounding against hers, as if they’d both just run to the limit of their endurance.

  His breathing was as erratic as hers. He could feel her breath along his cheek, could feel something stirring, ever so distantly, inside him.

  Again.

  He would have smiled if he’d had the energy, but she’d completely depleted him of it. When he finally shifted his body from hers, Troy gathered Delene to him.

  She tried to pull her thoughts back into focus, to pull herself out of the swirling cauldron of emotions that overwhelmed her.

  So much ground to regain.

  Her space had been breached as surely as if it had been a balloon speared by a javelin. How did she begin to reestablish her boundaries? She didn’t know, but she had to. Survival depended on it.

  He encased her in his arms. She struggled to break free, her eyes on his. “What are you doing?”

  Troy raised an eyebrow at the question. He would have thought the answer was self-explanatory, but then nothing with Delene ever seemed to be as cut-and-dried as it appeared.

  “Holding you.” It came out partially as a question, as he found himself waiting for her to put another interpretation on it. She was suddenly stiff as a board. As if she was ready to block and deflect whatever came her way.

  Russell had never held her, never attempted to do anything except either roll over and go to sleep or get up and go about his business, the lovemaking between them carrying no more significance to him than shining his shoes. Cavanaugh’s answer raised her suspicions as she searched for an ulterior motive.

  “Why?”

  He felt as if he was under interrogation. Because he was laid-back, he let her tone slide. “I don’t know. I thought it was kind of nice.”

  “For me.” Was this pity on his part? Or part of a plan to undermine her? She hated feeling like this—it ruined the moment. But better a ruined moment than facing something of more dire consequences.

  “Hopefully for you,” Troy allowed, then smiled. “Definitely for me.” Because there was no response to his teasing answer, he raised himself on his elbow and looked down at her. “What’s the matter, Delene, did I do something wrong?”

  Yes, you made me feel things again. I’m not supposed to feel things. I’m not supposed to feel anything.

  But in the absolute sense, no, he hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d done everything right. Perfect. He’d made love to her just the way a woman would have wanted to be made love to. As if she mattered.

  Suspicion clouded her eyes as she looked at him. “What are you after?”

  “After?” he repeated. “You mean like a compliment or a gold star?”

  She dug her elbow into the mattress, attempting to sit up. But his body blocked her way. Confining her. She pushe
d him back and faced him. “No, I mean what are you after? Why did you make love like that?”

  Okay, now she’d really lost him, Troy thought. “Like what?”

  “Like I mattered,” she cried in frustration. Why was he toying with her this way? “Like this mattered.” She gestured around at the bed and them.

  He took a moment before answering, knowing if he spoke immediately she’d accuse him of pandering to her. If he were in the habit, she would be the last person he would pander to. She was the kind who respected and needed complete honesty.

  “Maybe because it did. It does.”

  A dismissive laugh escaped her lips. “We hardly know each other.”

  Time didn’t have all that much to do with it. “Some people live a lifetime next to one another and don’t know each other at all. For others, it takes only a day.” Before she could scoff, he said, “My father proposed to my mother on their first date. They were married for twenty-five years.”

  “Before they got divorced?” she guessed.

  “No,” Troy corrected. “Before my mother died.”

  The stark, solitary statement pierced the armor Delene was trying to cover herself with. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  It had been more than five years ago and he still missed her terribly, as did his siblings. “We all are.” Troy thought of how lost his father had seemed at his mother’s funeral. It was the first time he’d ever realized that his father wasn’t larger-than-life. “Most of all, my father.”

  She’d forgotten whose son he was. “That would be the chief of detectives, Brian Cavanaugh?”

  Troy smiled. He couldn’t remember a day he hadn’t been proud of his father, even while he was rebelling against the man’s authority when he was a teenager. “The very same.”

  “So are you planning on proposing to me now?” Delene asked dryly.

  She watched as the smile crinkled his eyes. “I like keeping my options open.” Shifting, he drew a sheet over them. Without the heat of lovemaking, the loft felt a little chilled. “Besides, we haven’t had a first date yet.”