“That just about sums me up, doesn’t it?”
Kate huddled miserably against the curved stone wall only a few feet from Jim. The cave swallowed up light within yards of the entrance, so that the only reason she could locate Jim was the sound of his even respiration. She couldn’t mark the time other than by the inching of the thin slice of moonlight across the floor at the opening of the cave. The air was thick with moisture, a cold mist that lifted from the ocean and sank through her clothes as if she wore nothing at all.
“You’re cold.” His voice was rich and low. The walls of the cave seemed to hold it in, concentrate it, the only warmth in the whole damn place.
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
“You get snippy when you’re tired, do you know that?” She heard him shift—the scrape of his boots against stone, the slight creak of bones that reminded her that he was too old to be trying to sleep on uninsulated surfaces, too. “I can hear your teeth chattering.”
“So sorry I’m keeping you up.”
Waves slapped against rock. Wind whistled past the entrance, calling forth a low moan. Even the cave was complaining, she thought.
Finally he spoke again. “Come here,” he said with all the reluctance of a man prodded into something for honor that he’d never suggest of his own accord.
“Come where?”
“You know where.”
It stung. Even if dozens of men might have begged for the chance to warm her up in the dark, she’d never given any of them the opportunity to ask, much less do it. The one man that had ever slipped under her defenses, the only one she’d ever wanted to, was offering the comfort of his body but only because it was the polite thing to do.
“I’m fine,” she forced out. Her teeth couldn’t chatter as long as she clamped them together.
“I’ve no patience with hypothermia through stupidity or pride or whatever the hell’s your problem,” he said with enough anger under the words to remind her they skirted painful territory. His voice came nearer. “I’d rather knock you out to keep you warm than let you shiver over there alone.”
She had no time to prepare herself. He scooped her up with ease, one quick motion, and yanked her into his lap. His body enveloped hers, her back firm against the plane of his chest, one arm wrapped around her waist, the other angled across her chest, his thighs pressed snugly along the side of her legs.
Heat bloomed. Inside, outside—whether it came from him, or deep within herself, she couldn’t tell. Probably both. She could feel the warmth of his breath across the top of her head each time he exhaled, the thump of his heartbeat against her back. She went rigid, afraid that if she moved, if she breathed, she’d do something he’d take the wrong way.
Or the right way.
“Relax,” he murmured.
Laughter burst out of her at the impossibility of his suggestion.
“All right, maybe relaxing’s asking a lot,” he admitted. “But are you warmer?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Her skirts were bunched uncomfortably at her hip, her blouse twisted around her waist.
“Comfortable?”
“Well, no, not exactly.”
“So get comfortable.”
“I’m not sure that’s possible.” She lifted her hips to adjust her skirts and carefully settled back down. Behind her Jim sucked in a hissing breath. “Jim?”
He chuckled ruefully. “Okay, I admit it. Comfortable and relaxed is beyond us.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, starting to get up.
“No.” His arms tightened around her, bringing her more firmly against him. The inside of one forearm pressed against one breast, sparking a delicious throb. Oh, it had been so long since she had felt like this, balanced on the keen edge of want and anticipation, her body so alive she imagined she could feel the pulse of blood through her arteries, the swell of air in her lungs. “We should be practical. There’s no reason for you not to stay, except…” He paused. “No etiquette my mother ever taught me covers this particular situation, does it? I’m not sure whether I should apologize if I…react, or apologize if I don’t?”
Heat flooded her face. That he could say something so outrageous so calmly…it seemed a challenge, to see whether she would respond in kind, as the woman of the world he clearly expected her to be. “Heavens, luv, you should know that much about me by now. Apologize if you don’t.” But now that he’d planted the thought, she couldn’t help but think about…that, and that was all too obvious, the solid length of him hard against her hip.
So what now? Did she pretend not to notice? Pull away in shock? Or turn into him, sink into him, fill her hands with him?
She was not a girl. Not an innocent. Not unaware of the pleasures that could be found in the flesh. And she’d never thought that she would feel this driving surge of need, a pierce-point of vivid emotion in a life that had been very bland for a very long time.
“Then I won’t apologize,” he said.
It seemed terribly blatant to speak of it so baldly. Like the conversation of people who’d been lovers so long, there were no longer any musn’ts between them, nothing that remained unvoiced. The intimacy of it struck her as strongly as that of their position.
He did not move away. He still held her close. But there was no welcome in it, his touch as impersonal as it could be in such a situation.
Well, if he could be honest, so could she.
“You don’t like me very much, do you?” she asked. “Oh, you probably like how I look just fine, but you don’t like me.”
Silence slid through the cave while he weighed convention, politeness, and truth. “No.”
Kate had expected nothing else. And yet her breath gushed out of her in a disappointed rush. “Ah. Well, I asked, didn’t I?”
“If it helps, it’s not easy.” One hand rested against her side, and his thumb was stroking her there, back and forth, as if he’d no idea he was doing so.
She’d not had on so few undergarments since she was twelve. She knew she should be worried about it—her waist was not nearly as narrow without her corset. But oh, that bare touch felt so good.
“You’re not as…well, you are fair company when you choose to be.”
“Thank you ever so much.” Her eyes stung and she blinked hard. Oh, what did it matter? she asked herself. She could not allow it to matter.
Silence stretched. She counted the pounding of the waves, tried to sink into the mindless rhythm of them.
“You’re still cold,” he said. “Shivering.”
“I’m not cold.”
“Oh.” He paused. “Kate, why did you marry him?”
Five waves slapped against the rock before she spoke. “You know why I married him.”
“Tell me anyway.” Kate was light in Jim’s arms, warm and soft, with drifts of scent lifting up from her hair, blending sweetly with the smell of the ocean. Jim found himself balanced on a sword-thin edge, too painful to enjoy, too arousing to relinquish.
The young woman in the garden—the doctor’s wife—had been hard enough to resist. This woman he could hardly recognize. She was not the submissive, simply ornamental girl the doctor had called his wife, the one who’d meekly followed her husband’s commands and seemed to have nothing more to offer than a pretty face.
Her sharp wit honed his own. Her strong will intrigued him, a self-possession he never would have suspected. She carried a mature sensuality that seethed in every motion, every breath, so that he could not be within ten feet of her without thinking about…not attraction, not emotion, but sexuality in its rawest and basest form. She vibrated against him now, and he could not forget that she was a woman who had embraced the pleasures of the flesh. Who now accepted the presence of his erection against her with an equanimity that promised a complete lack of inhibition.
And yet, it was her own free sexuality that he hated. He could not rid himself of the corrosive truth of it. The doctor’s wife. The doctor’s faithless wife.
She sighed. “I married h
im for his money. There. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“I want to hear…” What did he want? Explanations, excuses? Something that would make him want her less, or something that would allow him to want her cleanly?
“What difference does it make now?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe none. Maybe a lot.” And maybe they could just stay right there, in that cave, a thousand miles away from the world, and none of it would matter except the way she felt in his arms.
“We were…my father was wealthy. I thought. We all thought. He probably was, once. But by the time he died, it was gone. Far enough gone that there was no way to even know how much there had been, or where it went.”
He should have told her to stop right there. It was the last thing he needed, this thread of commonality with her. “It happens.”
“Well, it wasn’t supposed to happen to us!” He felt her relax against him—her spine softened against his chest, her legs went lax, as though she was too distracted by the tale to guard herself against him any longer. “We weren’t prepared. We’d no way…I had sisters. Two of them, younger than me. One much younger. I was accustomed to caring for her anyway—my mother died within weeks of Emily’s birth.”
“So you did it for them,” he said flatly.
“Well, no, that would perhaps be broadening the truth a bit.” She refused to latch on to the excuse he’d so conveniently handed her. “I was concerned, no doubt about that. But we may well have made it. Anthea had a job. But…I am unsuited for struggle. I’m sure that is no surprise to you. We’d no experience in it. There seemed no reason…why should one live like that if one didn’t have to? It seemed an imminently practical solution at the time.” Her voice hardened. “It was an imminently practical solution.”
“Practical.” It was no different than most of the marriages he’d known in his youth. No different than his own parents’ had been, if it came right down to it. Which was probably why the mere suggestion of it made his blood run cold. “Poor Doc.”
“Poor Doc!” She laughed. “Who do you think suggested it? And in precisely those terms, if I remember correctly. I thought you knew the man better than that, Jim. If there’d ever been one shred of warm feeling in his soul, it died with Elaine.”
Stop! Stop right now, he told himself. But he’d never been able to hold firm against his curiosity; it was the one thing that kept him hacking through a jungle when it would have been so much easier to quit. “So he really didn’t care?”
“Didn’t care? I suppose you could say that. He liked looking at me. He liked his colleagues, his acquaintances, looking at me and knowing he could claim me. He liked me ordering his life and otherwise staying out of his way. That was what he cared about.”
“And he didn’t mind if you…explored other interests?”
“Explored other interests? Why should he?”
“Most men would.”
“But…oh.” She stiffened abruptly, sitting up, away from him. He should have known better.
He should have bit off his own tongue before going down this topic. Now she’d moved away, and he’d loved the feel of her against him even if he wasn’t very fond of her.
“You thought that…you thought that because of what we did, you assumed that’s how I am. That I did that with anyone. With everyone.”
“Well.” He paused, tried to think. For most women what he suggested would be a terrible insult. But for her…she was what she was. Maybe. “You were not…you were not the most, er, remote woman I’ve ever met.”
She laughed. Not joyfully, but as if she couldn’t help it, with the hopeless, bitter edge of one who knew it was no use to do anything but laugh. “You thought because I kissed you so easily, so shortly after we met, that I was…loose?”
“I…” His brother, his father, might have been slick enough to talk their way around it. He was not. “Yes.”
She kept laughing. She was still sitting in the spread of his legs and she put her hand on his shin, bending over with the force of hollow amusement until the sound of it veered toward hysteria.
He placed a calming hand on her back. “Kate—”
She shook him off. “I should have known. I never thought—”
“What?” he asked gently.
“Guilt is an interesting thing, isn’t it? That night, with you, that one lapse—it probably did more to turn me into the wife he wanted than his money ever did. From that day on, I don’t think I disagreed with him once.”
“So…” Careful, he reminded himself. He knew better than to assume when on expedition. And she must have been courted by half of the gentlemen in the eastern United States, men far more experienced in luring married women into betraying their vows than he. It would be absurd to let his pride—and his hope, he admitted—lead him into thinking that he was the lone exception to her rule. “It was just that time? With me?”
“Yes.” He wished he could see her. Look into her eyes, see her expression. But perhaps it was better that he couldn’t. Those eyes had been created expressly to lead men astray. “It was just you.” She sounded inalterably tired. As if she’d just dragged the whole world behind her all the way up the seacoast.
“All right.” He touched her shoulder. “It’s late, and it’s only going to get colder. Let’s get some sleep.”
She jerked. “What?”
“I’m tired. Talking’s hard on a man, you know. Not much practice. Can’t do it long without needing a nap to recuperate.”
“That’s…it?”
“What more do you want? You want to know that I’ve never been so damn flattered in my whole life? Better we go to sleep right now because, if I think about that much longer, I might get so puffed up I might not fit back out the cave entrance.” And if they didn’t go to sleep, right now, he might get too caught up in the knowledge that she was not the woman he’d hated, not the one he’d mistrusted. But this was no better. She was a woman to be courted and married, a woman who could demand a thousand things that he could never give her.
“Nothing to be proud of.” She mouthed the words automatically. “Maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe you were just there the exact moment I was at my weakest.” She fell silent for a moment, and then, tentatively, “You believe me?”
“Yup,” he said easily.
“But…” She couldn’t seem to settle in to it. Couldn’t believe it was that simple. She tried not to assume, to tamp down on the warmth and hope that sparked and swelled.
“Is there any reason I shouldn’t believe you?”
“You’ve heard me…shade the truth before.”
“But not to me. And only when you want something. Do you want something from me, Kate?”
She was tucked between his legs, her skirts frothing over his shins. They were insulated from the world by the sea, by the night, and she couldn’t bring herself to answer.
“We should sleep now,” he said and held out his arms to her.
Carefully, she eased back down, settling in. His chin rested on her head, his heart thumped against her back, and her rump snugged right up into the V of his legs.
Dear God, she thought. She was in a cold, damp, and smelly cave. They were stuck on a stupid little island in the middle of nowhere. And, right at that moment, there was no place on earth she would rather be. Dear God, she was in trouble.
Spending a night sitting upright, leaning against chilly stone, made the morning every bit as painful as Jim expected. His back screamed at him for his foolishness; his hips ached, and his knees protested even before he asked them to move.
He’d counted on waking up with Kate in his lap to distract him. Unfortunately, he woke up empty-handed.
Gray morning light washed through the cave, penetrating ten feet or so into the interior. Mist blurred the light, making it dim and soft and hazy. It had to be early, very early, and the chill seeped up from the floor and sank deeply into his bones.
She knelt a few feet away, frowning as she tugged her fingers through the snarled len
gth of her hair. Her outlines were indistinct, as if she were a figure that came to him in a dream. Her blouse was untucked, thoroughly crushed, and beneath it her curves were soft and unstructured. She looked like a woman who’d spent an entire night in slow, hot lovemaking and had only just rolled out of bed, surrendering very reluctantly to the morning.
She must have felt his gaze upon her for suddenly she looked up, meeting his eyes only briefly before dipping her head again.
“Don’t look at me like that!”
“Like what?”
“I’m such a mess,” she said. “I wouldn’t want you to…oh, just don’t look at me right now. All right?”
He got up and went over to her and then knelt down in front of her, near enough for their knees to bump gently. She kept her head down, limp swaths of golden hair shielding her face.
“Do you want to know the truth?” he asked quietly.
“No. Whyever would I want the truth?”
He chuckled. “You’re getting it anyway.” Gently he brushed back her hair, exposing the side of her face, beautiful bones that stood out more sharply now than in her youth. “You’ve never looked more kissable in your whole damn life than you do right at this moment.”
“What?” She whipped her head up, disbelief written on every feature.
“You heard me.”
She searched his face, trying to see through to the truth of it. Then she shook her head. “You lie so prettily.”
“No.” He let his fingers trace down the curve of her cheek, the slope of her jaw before he placed them beneath her chin and tipped her head up. “Usually you look”—he hesitated, trying to form the thoughts clearly—“perfect. Like you wouldn’t be warm to the touch. Like a man should be afraid to tumble you because he might disarrange your hair. Like a man might take his pleasure looking at you, but he could never hope to share any with you.”
She was mute, her eyes wide and brilliant blue. “But right now you look real. Real and alive and wholly female, the sort who could get sweaty and wild in bed, one who’d give as well as take. A woman a man could live with, rather than just worship.”
A Wedding Story Page 17