He jumped out to her like a flagpole, and she made a little sound of pleasure in her own prowess. She barely heard the whisper of her name, but tenderly touched him and petted and played and explored all her resources, taking it into her mouth, teasing just the peak with ragged little laps of the tongue. At long last she heard what seemed to be a ferocious roar, and she laughed breathlessly with delight as she found herself supine on the rug, grasped in his arms, nearly caveman-style. “You're going to wreck the suit!” she teased him, but he didn't hear her, or he didn't care, and it was a negligible warning anyway, since the spandex held up very well. With the way he tossed it, though, she was very glad that the windows were closed. She grinned, set her arms around him, and the soft cry that escaped her when he rammed into her was caught sweetly by his mouth in the heat of his kiss.
They climaxed nearly simultaneously, and then they stayed there, on the floor, drowsy, entwined, half awake and half asleep. A while later, Brent rose and left her to go into the small kitchen and to the refrigerator, where he found a bottle of champagne, a wedge of Brie, a square of Camembert and a box of Townhouse crackers. He came back and they set up the sofa pillows on the floor. Gayle leaned against his chest while she fixed crackers and slipped them into his mouth while he struggled with the champagne bottle. It popped with a vengeance, spilling champagne all over them. When they grew tired of the crackers, Brent became more entranced with the champagne, and Gayle giggled and protested and reminded him of what a bottle of the stuff was worth as he fizzed it up to spray more upon her. It ended with her shrieking and escaping from him to the bedroom—and him finding her there and the two of them making love again, with him licking the champagne from her body...from all over her body, even from places she was quite sure the champagne could have never gotten to.
At ten they decided to rouse themselves for showers and dinner. They ate in the elegant dining room across a candlelit table and then leisurely strolled around beneath the moonlight and returned to the room once again. Gayle imagined that anyone at all watching them knew they were newlyweds; they had that look about them, that dream quality. There was no hurry to anything; life was sweet and languorous and so all-inclusive of each other.
They made love again, and with their bodies still entwined, they drifted off to sleep. Sleep was dark and sweet, and Gayle would never have imagined that she could dream, but she did.
It started off well, softly, beautifully. She was in a realm she had nearly imagined in her waking hours, that realm she was so convinced belonged only to lovers and newlyweds. The world receded; reality ebbed. There could only be two people in such a world. The mist rolled back all else; it formed barriers and walls, and left only the man and the woman.
And desire—sweet, naked, and stark.
In the dream, she walked on a bed of clouds, she walked and she smiled, just a slow, sultry curve of the lips because she knew...she knew she was to meet him, and she knew that they would lie down in the clouds together. And it had been a long time, a long, long time since they had done so. She had been deprived of him, but then she had known that she would see him again, and so the anticipation was heightened, and she knew every sensation. She knew the drift of the mist across her naked flesh, against her breasts; she knew the feel of the clouds against the soles of her feet. She knew the feel of her hair, brushing against her shoulders.
He was ahead.
She could see him, coming out of the mist. Dark and powerful and sleekly masculine, muscular and taut and fine. He came to her, steadily, surely, from out of the mist. Naked as she was, kissed by the silver and gray encompassing clouds, she wanted to run to him. Any moment they would be together; any moment she could touch him.
She started to run gracefully through the gentle mist. She could see him so clearly, the man she loved. Yet even as she neared him, she paused in confusion. Something was not quite right. It was him...and yet he was different. How, she couldn't understand.
He was calling to her, shouting her name. His arms were outstretched to her. Still, she hesitated. He called her again, though she could not make out her name, she could hear the sound of his voice, low, deep, reverberating. He came to her, and she forgot what was different because she was in his arms.
Desperate, frantic, they clung together. His mouth on hers, covering it; his hands moved hurriedly, hungrily as he explored her. It had been so long...He was almost hurtful, but she didn't care because she understood, and it was so good to feel him, so fine to have his taut, hot body next to hers. She kissed him and kissed him and kissed him.
Suddenly Uncle Hick was there. He was standing beside the two of them, watching them. Gayle knew he was there, and he knew that she and Brent were naked and that they were engaged in an embrace that was highly intimate and personal, and she didn't really care. “War,” Uncle Hick said. “There's a lot of tragedy in warfare.”
Gayle ignored him. Brent was lowering her down into the clouds. His fevered kisses fell against her breast and his hand was riding along her thigh. Her head fell back and she turned at last to tell Uncle Hick that he was welcome in their home, but he should have the decency to leave them alone in the clouds.
Uncle Hick was gone. Only his voice remained. “War. There's a lot of tragedy in warfare, young woman. Your husband could tell you that. Ask Brent. Ask Brent.”
He was suckling her breast. His weight was between her thighs now; his sex was hard and pulsing. She slid her fingers into his hair, pulling his head up so that she might see him and kiss his lips.
She gasped in horror, and started to scream. It wasn't Brent! A corpse was making love to her, a corpse with decaying flesh and an evil, leering smile. His hair came out in handfuls as she touched him, even as she tried to kick away. A chunk of flesh fell away from his face, and she could see the bone. And she could hear the hatred in his voice as he told her, “I have waited for you. I have waited all my life for you.”
Then the only sound was that of her own voice as she kept screaming and screaming and screaming. The mist swirled around her. He was gone and she was gone, and all that remained was the mist and the sheer, horrible terror of her hysterical scream.
“Gayle! Gayle! Dammit to hell, Gayle, wake up!”
The sound stopped; she realized that she was sitting in the darkness, with moonlight drifting in through the draperies. Brent's arms were locked around her and he was shaking her.
She was trembling. She could remember that she had been dreaming and that the dream had been terrifying.
“Gayle!” He sounded so angry.
“I—I'm awake,” she told him.
“What the hell was that all about?”
“I—I don't know. I had a nightmare.”
“About what?”
“I don't remember.”
“You just woke up screaming your head off and you don't remember what it was about?”
“No! I'm sorry. I don't.”
He let her go and stood abruptly, padding away on silent feet to the window, where he paused. She could see his naked form in the darkness, tall, powerfully built. She wanted to reach out to him. She wanted him to come back to her and hold her. He didn't. He stayed there, looking out at nothing in the night.
She licked her lips. The question was probably stupid. “What...what's the matter?”
He was silent for a moment; then he seemed to explode. “You kicked the hell out of me!”
She was tempted to giggle, except that he wasn't laughing, and the situation didn't seem to be funny at all.
“I'm sorry.”
“And I'm amazed that no one is up here; I'm surprised that no one in this hotel called the police. They must think I was strangling you to death.”
“Brent, I'm sorry.” He was silent, and she was silent—hurt. He didn't seem to care that she had been so upset. What difference did it make what the dream had been about?
She sniffled then, long and loud. Maybe it was a bit of an act—a feminine act at that—but he seemed so far away from her,
and she was desperate to have him back.
“Brent, please...it was all your fault!”
“My fault!”
“You spent the day telling me that this place is haunted.”
Somehow she was certain that her dream had had nothing to do with the hotel, but saying so might bring him back to her, and she wanted him to hold her so badly. There was a magic that existed between them. Like dozens of silken webs. They were more in love than other people. She didn't want one of those fragile webs broken. She wanted to love him every bit as deeply when she was a wrinkled old lady of eighty and their great-grandchildren crawled around at their knees.
He stayed by the window for a moment longer, then he let out a long sigh of exasperation and returned to sit at the foot of the bed. “You don't remember a thing, huh?”
She shook her head vehemently. “Only that I was very frightened!”
He reached out to her; she threw herself against his chest, hugging him tightly.
“Hey, watch it!” He let out a strangled cry. She pulled away slightly, searching for his eyes in the moonlight. He grimaced. “Injured goods, Mrs. McCauley. You kicked, you bit, you hit, you scratched, but mostly, m'am, you kicked.”
“Oh, Brent!” Aghast, she pulled back. She gasped as she saw the scratches on his chest. “I did that?”
“You did.”
“Oh, Brent! I am so sorry.”
“My chest will survive,” he said indignantly. “I'm just hoping the rest of me does as well. This is a honeymoon you know, you mangler.”
She laughed at last, aware that he was half serious but teasing her too. “I promise I'll make it up to you.”
“You will, huh?” He leaned down upon an elbow expectantly.
“Cross my heart and hope to die!” She did so as she spoke. Then she leaned against him and kissed the scratches on his chest, her silken hair falling over his shoulders.
“I didn't mean that you had to do it this very second,” he told her hoarsely.
“I believe in no-nonsense apologies.”
He leaned back, lacing his fingers behind his head as she went on to show him how very gentle she could be.
He wanted to forget the incident but he couldn't. He caught her shoulders and pulled her up against him, watching her eyes seriously. “Gayle, remember the other dream you had? At the house?”
“What?” Her eyes clouded. Then she answered a little sulkily, “Oh, yes. That seems like ages ago. Why?”
“I think we may need to get help for these.”
“What?” she demanded. “Brent, I had a lousy nightmare. Everyone has them now and then!”
Not like that, he told himself in silence. “Gayle, you had that awful dream at the house; you passed out at your own wedding; and now you've had this awful dream tonight.”
“I told you,” she said crossly, “this one was probably your fault, feeding me that bit about ghosts all day.”
He sighed and pressed her head down against his chest. She curled her fingers up against him. “Brent?”
“Huh?”
“Honestly, nothing is wrong. I swear to you, I'm well adjusted and I've never been happier in my life, and I don't need a shrink.”
He was silent for a moment; then she felt him shrug. “I don't believe in shrinks too much myself. I'm just worried about you, that's all. I love you. I don't like seeing you like that. And,” he grinned, fluffing her hair, “I don't like being halfway disemboweled in my sleep by my own wife.”
“Oh, you're exaggerating horribly!” She told him.
“Only a little.”
“Well, I was trying to make it up to you.”
“All right. I guess I'll let you.”
“That's very big of you, Mr. McCauley.”
“What did you say? Big? That's exactly why I intend to let you get right to it.”
She started laughing, but then it turned into one of the most erotic of their experiences together. They touched and laved and licked each other simultaneously, came together, moved together, neared peak after peak, and started all over again. Dawn was breaking when they curled together, fulfilled and comfortably exhausted. Gayle idly stroked his cheek.
“Can it possibly always be like this?” She asked him.
He smoothed back her hair. “I imagine that we will slow down,” he told her. She felt him shrug. “But I can't imagine ever not wanting to touch you. To love you.”
She smiled, happy in his arms. She whispered how much she loved him.
He was silent for so long that she thought he had fallen asleep. Then he spoke suddenly. “Gayle.”
“What?”
“I want you to do me a favor.”
“What?”
He rolled toward her and she knew that he was very serious. “If you continue to have these nightmares, you will see someone about them.”
“A psychiatrist?”
“Yes. I'll go with you. Gayle—you really frightened me tonight. Even more so than at the wedding.”
“At the wedding? Brent, I just passed out! Maybe it was the heat—”
“It wasn't hot.”
“The excitement, the crush of people.”
“Humor me, okay? I said if. Just if. Okay?”
“I won't have any more nightmares, I promise,” she said. And then she kissed him.
It didn't happen again. Not while they were on their honeymoon. They left on the sailboat that afternoon, the chartered Cathy Lee. The captain and his mate were man and wife, a young couple themselves, and though Brent had planned for him and Gayle to be alone, they spent a lot of time with Mike and Sally Cheny, gambling in Freeport and on Paradise Island, snorkling on the reefs, dining on turtle soup in Nassau, and exploring the coastline along Eleuthera.
Gayle bought souvenirs by the dozens, grass hats and bags and carvings and perfume. They took motorbikes around the islands and visited old forts and churches.
On the Out Islands, silent and empty of tourists, both couples wandered off alone. Brent and Gayle found their own little stretches of paradise, Edens where the sand was clean and white and no other living soul could be seen. They made love upon that sand and in the clear azure waters. They walked naked hand and hand beneath the sun, like God's first couple.
Gayle did not dream again.
By the time the honeymoon was over she was more deeply in love than ever before. More a part of Brent. And Brent was more a part of her—almost as if a piece of her soul resided in him and she held a section of his heart within her own. It had been perfect and exquisite. Not a single plan had gone awry.
Almost as if God had decreed it all. As if He had looked down from the heavens and determined that everything for them should be like a Shangri-la.
She knew so much more. One day on the beach he had talked about his three years in the service, and she had been relieved to discover that though it had perhaps hardened him and though he remembered the pain of losing his comrades and the horror of jungle fighting, he seemed well adjusted despite it all. She told him that his Uncle Hick had mentioned it to her, and she'd been a little bit distressed to realize then, on the day of her wedding, just how little she knew about him.
“It's all a discovery,” he told her then. “We've years and years and years...”
But it had felt so good to begin. She had been able to tell him more about Thane, about studying in Paris, about her parents, Geoff, life—everything.
It was wonderful. The freedom was wonderful, the touching, the loving, walking the beach, talking...
Sitting together for long, sweet silences.
When it was over, when they sailed back to Miami and flew back to Virginia, Gayle could say that she had touched a piece of heaven, and no woman could be happier.
Neither she nor Brent even remembered the night of her horrible dream. It was as if they had slept right through it.
CHAPTER 12
Till Death Do Us Part
Williamsburg, Virginia Spring 1775
Percy pulled his watch f
ob from his pocket and anxiously looked at the time, straining against the dwindling light. Nearly seven. If she did not come soon, she would not come at all.
He let out a sound of impatience and pushed away from the oak where he had been resting. He came up to Goliath and patted the massive animal on the neck. “Will she come, boy? What do you say?” He grinned, thinking of the cat-and-mouse game they had played over the last year. She had teased, she had flirted, she had tried to see him in public places only; and then she had gambled as desperately as he to find moments alone. It had been a risky venture too, for the relations between the British loyalists and the colonists had rapidly deteriorated. Shots had been fired in Lexington; Massachusetts was in open revolt—and Virginia was following. It was time for the British to depart, for Williamsburg was going to be a rebel town.
Percy's smile faded. She had to come. She had to come to him; he could not believe that she would not. Surely she loved him. He was due in Philadelphia soon to take his place with illustrious men he admired so very much. Men whom these colonies could not turn their backs upon. Great men who had dared to speak out against tyranny. Adams, Hancock, Patrick Henry...traitors to the British. Heroes to the colonists.
But even his revolutionary fervor paled when he thought of Katrina. Where was she? When would she come? She was British, he knew. She had lived these years in a nest of Tories. The breaking point was here; what would she do.
He was in love, and so his heart rose and sank with every whisper of the wind. Don't let her know it! he reminded himself. Don't let her know how desperate your heart is, for she can be a minx, eager to see you so humbly crave her favors.
It had gone much, much further than that, though. She would come with him; surely she would come with him...
He started. This time, he heard it. He really heard. The sound of hoofbeats against the path.
A horse came charging into view. It reared and snorted as the rider, swathed in a dark, heavy cloak, pulled up hard upon the reins.
“Percy!” she called.
It was his love. He strode from the trees, eager to hold her, eager to lift her from her horse. Her hands fell to his shoulders and he brought her down. She tried to speak; his eager kisses silenced her and she clung to him, breathless and weak.
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