Cloud Waltzer

by Tory Cates

  “Archer, I’ve wanted you so terribly,” she babbled, her voice a barely recognizable whimper of loving.

  “Not half as much as I’ve wanted you.” Hot breaths of need carried Archer’s words to batter damply against Meredith’s ear. The tickling tendrils that shivered out from that spot burst into great blooms of electric sensation when Archer’s mouth closed over the arching column of her neck.

  Archer felt the purring of her want vibrate against his lips. In that instant, all the frustrated desire, confusion, and despair of the past two months were converted into mindless, rapacious need. He had to exercise an almost superhuman strength to keep himself from ripping the annoying encumbrance of clothes from Meredith’s quivering body, a body that had tormented him in fantasy for so many weeks. But he’d been too long denied not to savor the incalculable treasure that was now, unbelievably, his.

  Meredith felt the tremor that shook Archer’s hand as he lifted her top over her head. She saw that same tremor in her own hands as she slid them up under his shirt to push it away from the magnificence of his chest. Archer ensnared Meredith with the lethal power of his Nordic gaze. She was lost in it even as her hands reacquainted themselves with the sculpted swells of his chest, the corded strength of his shoulders, the rippling of his rib cage.

  Archer’s hands too were avidly renewing a passionate friendship. They devoured the silken smooth feel of her skin and the intoxicating delicacy of the fine bones beneath it. He unhooked the front fastening of her bra and was dazzled by the beauty that even his fantasy had proved inadequate at faithfully reproducing.

  As he leaned slowly forward Meredith took the flimsy garment from his hands and parted it with her own fingers until it dropped from her shoulders into a puddle of fluff at her feet. Archer’s mouth on the shell-pink crest of her breast was a molten potion that coursed through her, narcotizing her into a rubber-legged languor. As he sucked at the straining centers, it felt as if the ambrosial nectar that was melting within her was being drawn up from the very core of her femininity. She swayed against him, weakened by the many powerful emotions colliding within her in such a short period of time.

  “Meredith”—her name blossomed in a warm vapor that caressed her ear—“be my wife.”

  The simple words jolted Meredith, rocking her more profoundly than any of the upheavals she had so far experienced in a day filled with them. Why did it jolt her so? Wasn’t his request the very crystallization of all she dreamed of? Could she even imagine a future in which she and Archer weren’t together?

  “Why are you trembling?” Archer asked, his passionate caresses turning to ones of comfort.

  “I . . . I . . .” Meredith started off before she finally stammered out her reply. “Yes, oh, yes, of course, I want to be your wife. I want you to be my husband. I want us to have children together. To grow old together. But I can’t. Not yet. I’ve come so far in the last few weeks, found so much strength within myself. I can’t stop now. I don’t want to come to you, Archer, as anything less than an equal partner.”

  Archer opened his mouth to protest, then stopped himself. “I wouldn’t want anything less,” he said, his voice dull. “If it means I have to wait a bit longer, so be it. I’ve already waited my whole life for you, Meredith.”

  Emboldened by a love neither of them could deny, Meredith’s fingers found the turquoise-encrusted buckle of his belt as his went to the zipper of her pants. She paused, though, stepping away from him. She felt suddenly shy, as though the past weeks, and now his proposal, had made Archer something of a stranger again instead of the man who had introduced her to her own body.

  “The lights,” she muttered.

  A hiss of exasperation escaped Archer’s lips before he could control himself. “I pushed before and almost ruined the best thing to ever come into my life,” he admitted. “I won’t make the same mistake twice. If it’s darkness you want, my darling, it’s darkness you’ll have. But mark my words, you’ll come to me in sunshine one day.”

  He flicked off the lights and the shuttered office grew dim and dusky. The last vestiges of Meredith’s timidity fled then, and she answered Archer’s hunger with one even more devouring. They loved one another in the traditional way, his body covering hers, hers cushioning and bearing his glorious weight. But the heat of their love animated the act with a power that both transcended and glorified their every physical movement.

  As Meredith lay against the thick, soft carpet in glowing fulfillment beneath Archer, he buried his head against her neck. She felt several wrenching shudders in his chest pressed against her own. Her hands soothed over his back and she felt a wetness trickle down her neck. Was it sweat or could it have been . . . not a tear?

  “Archer?” she asked.

  But his only answer was to roll onto his back and hold her to his chest even more tightly, pressing her head into the crook of his neck. After a few minutes had passed, he said in a thick voice, “Let’s not talk. Don’t tell me how long it will be before this can happen again. Let’s not even say good-bye. When you’re ready, when you have to, just leave. I’ll be waiting for you when you return.”

  Meredith lay for a long, still moment on Archer’s chest and let the tidal surge of his heartbeat fill her mind and block out all thoughts, especially ones of the inevitable parting that each beat of his heart brought one second nearer. For just a few minutes, she wanted to be absolutely with him. Someday, she promised herself, it will never have to end.

  Archer shifted beneath her and they both rose. They looked at each other and Meredith knew that he was right; there was nothing else they could say. Not now.

  In silence they dressed and parted.

  The night of the New Year had already begun. Meredith was grateful for the darkness. She couldn’t have borne facing a blinding bright sun. She felt as if an automaton had replaced her, sitting behind the wheel driving her home. She’d been eviscerated, hollowed out, the real Meredith Tolliver left back on the carpeted floor of Hanson Development.

  And that feeling, she told her wilted self sternly, is exactly why you must keep on driving. She repeated the words she’d told Archer again in her mind, that she would come to him only as an equal partner. She had to build her inner strength before she could mesh with him. Meredith beat that thought through her mind like a chant to ward off the overwhelming urge she was battling to simply turn around and return to Archer’s arms.

  At midnight that evening she was watching the televised clock in Times Square blink in the New Year. Thor was asleep on her lap and she tried to remember a time when she’d felt lonelier. She knew one existed but couldn’t immediately recall it. After seeing the year that had changed her life laid to rest, she toasted the new one with a mug of herbal tea and went to bed.

  But sleep did not come. Instead, all the thoughts she’d tried to drown out listening to the oceanic beat of Archer’s pulse swam up to the surface of her consciousness. They bore only one message and it was: “Meredith Tolliver, you are a fool.”

  Fool? she demanded of herself. She’d been convinced that, heartbreakingly hard as it was, the course she was following was at least wise, was the rational thing to do. But the instincts she’d overridden when she’d left Archer all disagreed. It wasn’t strength she was seeking, it was safety. A love as powerful as the one she bore for Archer Hanson was a terrifying, uncontrollable thing and it scared her. Scared her into rationalizing that she needed time alone to fortify herself.

  Coward, the instincts she’d attempted to deny mocked her. There was no denying them now as Meredith lay alone with only herself and the truth. Finally facing that truth was like seeing all the jumbled pieces of a puzzle she’d been attempting to work blindfolded fall into place. No corner of her mind remained askew. The picture was perfect. What she had to do, wanted desperately to do, was clear. She felt positively buoyant as the weight she’d been shouldering for so long was released. Great stone masses were transformed into piles of feathers.

  Her plan firm in her mind,
Meredith set the alarm, rolled over, and for the first time in months, slept soundly.

  She was up before the alarm went off, scurrying to the window to check the weather. Thank God, the warm spell was continuing. She showered, taking extra care to shave her legs right up to the tops of her thighs, and dressed quickly in the precise outfit she’d decided on the night before. She glimpsed herself in the mirror when she’d finished, pleased with how elegant her taupe boots looked with the emerald green cape Archer had given her skimming their tops.

  A silvery dawn moon, like a New Year’s reveler surprised by morning, still hung over the volcanic cones of the West Mesa. The field that had been the site of the Fiesta was populated now only by Archer, Cloud Waltzer III, some of the familiar faces from Solar Concepts, and a couple of TV news crews. A shiver of nervousness nudged away Meredith’s jubilance. She parked back away from the center of activity and wrapped the cape more tightly around her as if trying to draw courage from its velvety warm folds. What had seemed the perfect plan last night now appeared somewhat flawed. For a second or two she wondered what on earth she thought she was doing. The answer beat through her with a revivifying strength: She was reclaiming her life.

  Fortified, she marched over to the edge of the crowd. Archer was too preoccupied to notice her approach as he made the last-minute checks, assuring himself that all vital equipment, like a lighter for the auxiliary propane system, was on board.

  Phil, her neighbor, did spot her. The blast of the propane burner covered his greeting as he caught sight of Meredith. Archer’s back was to Meredith and his attention was absorbed by the flame he was carefully directing into the upright envelope. After spending weeks developing it, he didn’t want the least flicker of flame overheating it. Meredith hurried over to Phil, and with nervous apprehension squeezing her voice, she told him her plan, at least the part of it that involved him.

  “Sure,” he agreed eagerly as she hesitantly asked if, just this once, she could replace him on the flight. Phil had immediately sensed that something far more important than a lighthearted lark was at stake.

  The sun was streaking slanted rays over the Sandias when Archer, still monitoring the flame roaring above his head, called out, “Climb in, Phil, we’re lifting off.”

  Rather than straddling the rim, Meredith hopped up onto it, steadying herself with one hand and keeping the cape pulled tightly about her with the other, then swung her legs into the basket.

  Feeling a body land behind him, Archer ordered, “Let her go,” and the hands keeping the straining balloon earthbound released their hold. They bobbed up like a ball that had been held underwater.

  Archer turned off the burner and finally looked around. In that second, Meredith felt as she had on her first balloon ride. She felt she had made an inexorable error. The surprised delight she’d expected to see wasn’t anywhere in evidence.

  “What are you doing here?” Archer demanded angrily.

  Stunned by his reaction, Meredith couldn’t force out her reply fast enough.

  “I told you that I wouldn’t be played like a yo-yo,” he informed her with a menacing heat.

  “That’s not why I’m—” Meredith began, but Archer cut her off.

  “We’re landing,” he informed her bluntly, reaching a hand up toward the rip panel cord. The blond hairs along his arm glinted in the sunlight. Meredith’s own hand went up to stop his.

  “Don’t,” she pleaded with him. Then, in a stronger, surer voice, she asked again. “Don’t.”

  They continued to ascend. Behind Archer, Meredith watched the peaks of the Sandias, gulleyed with early morning sunshine, come into view, then vanish as they gained altitude. Soon there was nothing but boundless sky behind him. In a distant corner of her mind, she thought that this was the way Archer should always be framed—a heroic figure with a spirit from another, bolder time, sailing through a sun-drenched sky.

  Archer’s hand stopped, but Meredith knew it was only a momentary reprieve. He was not a man used to being pushed and she had already forced him farther than any other human had before. She had to bring them both back from the brink of the abyss she’d led them to, and quickly.

  “You said that one day I would come to you in sunshine,” she said, her voice quavery and uncertain now that the moment of the ultimate test of her courage had arrived. With trembling hands, she parted the folds of the cloak. “That day has come.”

  Archer’s mouth fell open into a slack hole of amazement. Sunlight played over the naked curves of Meredith’s body, gilding its ivory delicacy with a golden patina. A smile that started at the soles of his feet crept across the length of Archer’s face, sealing his mouth into a seam of growing joy. He would have scooped her into his arms then and there, but something stopped him. He had to know if she was sure. He couldn’t, wouldn’t allow himself, to be plunged anew into the desolation she’d left him in yesterday. He stood motionless. This time had to be for always. For always, or never.

  Meredith saw the testing question in his eyes. She pulled the cloak back farther. The cool air and Archer’s hot gaze teased the crowns of her breasts into wakefulness. She slid the voluptuous, deep green fabric over them. It swished about her waist, the juncture of her thighs. Volumes of understanding passed between her and Archer as her fingers unknotted the bow at her throat. The cape fell to the wicker floor. This time was for always.

  Archer opened his arms to her and she stepped into them, stepped into the life they would share together.

  “Does this mean you still want me?” she asked, hugging herself to his warmth.

  “ ‘Want’ does not even begin to cover the territory,” Archer answered, a laugh building deep in his chest. He knelt to retrieve the cloak. “I do this with the greatest reluctance and concern for your health,” he said, wrapping it around her shoulders.

  As the cleansing laughter of delight and fulfillment rumbled through him, Archer held Meredith away from him to gaze into her face. “Never stop surprising me.”

  As she reached up to capture that enrapturing Viking mouth with her own, Meredith whispered, “Never stop, period. Just never stop.”

  Cloud Waltzer III, warmed by the sun and dancing on merry zephyrs of wind, rose through a cloudless sky, bearing her passengers forward into their future.

  TORY CATES, a RITA Award finalist, is the author of five romance novels set in the American West. A journalist who has written for magazines such as O, Real Simple, Cosmopolitan, and Good Housekeeping, she draws on her nonfiction experience to give her romances their special authenticity. She also writes critically acclaimed novels under another name. Tory Cates lives in Austin, Texas.

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  ALSO BY TORY CATES

  A High, Hard Land

  Different Dreams

  Where Aspens Quake

  Handful of Sky

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1984 by Tory Cates

  Previously published in 1984 by Silhoue
tte Books.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Pocket Books paperback edition January 2014

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  Designed by Lewelin Polanco

  Cover illustration by Craig White

  ISBN 978-1-4767-3256-5

  ISBN 978-1-4767-3261-9 (ebook)