Owen's Touch

by Lee Magner

  “You will if you’re Maryanice Roualt,” Brock offered, eyeing her speculatively.

  “Yes. If.” She didn’t think there was much possibility of that. Still, the name was more familiar every time she heard it. Mariana frowned in worry.

  “What about the other things?” Lefcourt prompted.

  A credit card. Two small photographs. One was a picture of a beautiful, Mediterranean-style, whitewashed building with a blue sea in the background.

  “It looks like a tour-guide advertisement photograph for the Greek islands,” Mariana said thoughtfully.

  “Ever been to Greece?” Brock prompted.

  “Only in my dreams,” Mariana replied. She looked at the insurance man. “As far as I know.”

  “What about that other photograph?” Lefcourt asked. Mariana flipped the sleeve and removed the other photograph for a closer look.

  A small child was standing beside a small red tricycle. Her stuffed doll was sitting on the vehicle seat. The little girl was staring directly into the camera lens, her eyes wide and serious, seeming much older than her tender years. And she was clutching the stuffed doll’s hand, as if it were a desperately trusted friend.

  “She looks terrified. All alone.” Mariana whispered, a ripple of recognition sliding across her. She knew that child. And that child knew her. Mariana was certain of it. They were connected, she and that little girl.

  “Mariana?” Lefcourt nudged her.

  “I do recognize something familiar in that little girl...but I’m not sure what it is....”

  Mariana knew what it was, but she didn’t want to say it out loud. Not to Lefcourt and Brock. Not yet. Not until she’d sorted the facts out. She heard Owen’s footsteps approaching and she looked up at him quickly.

  “That didn’t take long,” she said.

  “It doesn’t take long to say ‘no comment.’” he admitted with a shrug. “They got their pictures. Asked their provocative questions. Left with my lawyer’s name, address and phone number.”

  “Did they want to hear about my finding the purse?” Brock asked hopefully.

  “We didn’t discuss the purse. They haven’t heard about it.”

  Lefcourt and Brock looked surprised.

  “Huh. I guess New York needs a few country mystery stories to fill up the out-of-town pages now and then,” Lefcourt offered.

  “Nah. They’re just picking up the trail on Portia and her poor, tragic protégés. aren’t they?” Brock guessed astutely. He glanced at Mariana. “That Jane Doe angle is going to be the theme, isn’t it, Owen?”

  “Probably,” he reluctantly replied. He glanced at his watch. “Look, if you two have finished asking Mariana questions for now, I’d like to drive her over to the address on that license.”

  Lefcourt and Brock stood up and nodded simultaneously in agreement.

  “I’ll get back to you if we get word on the man in the sketch or Mariana’s connection to Phoenix.”

  “Thanks,” Owen said, maneuvering the two men toward the door firmly but politely.

  After Lefcourt and Brock had left, Owen returned in search of Mariana. He discovered her standing in the kitchen rubbing her temples with her fingertips.

  “Headache?”

  She nodded.

  He went to his bedroom and its connecting bathroom suite. Mariana could hear a cabinet open and close. Then Owen returned holding a bottle of nonprescription analgesics.

  Owen handed her a glass of cold water and silently watched her take two pills.

  “Do you want to see a doctor?”

  “For a headache?” She glanced at him in surprise. He looked uncertain. “I think it’s stress,” she explained, realizing he might wonder if the headache was a symptom of something more serious related to her head injury and subsequent coma. “I, uh, keep remembering things.” She took a deep breath and slowly let it out. She was hoping it would help her relax. Mariana didn’t notice any change, unfortunately. “It’s like seeing another jigsaw puzzle piece. But I can’t get enough of them to make a sizable portion of the whole picture.” She pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples and closed her eyes. “It’s so frustrating....”

  Owen came closer.

  “Like the name on the driver’s license...”

  “I do know that name.” She opened her eyes and turned to him urgently. He was only a couple of feet away, coming nearer, reaching out to drape his arm around her shoulders. “It’s bizarre... but I’m sure I know Maryanice. As well as I know myself. But I don’t remember meeting her. And none of the things coming back about growing up include her. And I’m getting back more of that all the time....”

  He drew her back toward her bedroom, bending his head close to listen.

  “I remember my first day of school. The building and the school yard and the sweet young woman who was my teacher. I remember my mother and father attending school events in the evenings and summer vacations and—” she stopped when they were inside her bedroom and turned to look up at Owen “—that photograph of the little girl and her doll on the bike.”

  He put his hands on the tops of her shoulders and gently began to knead the tension-knotted flesh. He gazed into her anxious green eyes and reluctantly resisted the urge to lower his mouth to hers and distract her with a kiss. They needed to untangle the truth.

  “What about the photograph of the little girl, her doll and her bike?” he dutifully asked with a somewhat amused smile. “I’ll bet you looked a lot like her at that age.” He found that he just couldn’t resist. He brushed a soft, tender kiss across her parted lips.

  Mariana half closed her eyes and slanted her mouth against his without thinking. For a moment, she was suspended in the pleasure of the intimacy. She slid her arms around his neck and stood on tiptoe, pressing herself against his warm, muscular body.

  Reluctantly, she pulled a little away and gazed into his half-closed eyes. His hands kneaded their way down the tense muscles along either side of her spine.

  “What about the photograph?” he said, raising an eyebrow and smiling lazily at her.

  “You’re right,” she finally managed to say. “I looked a lot like that. As a matter of fact, I looked exactly like that.”

  She stared at him.

  His hands drifted down to her hips. They stilled. He frowned and looked at her questioningly.

  Mariana nodded slowly and very deliberately. “That is a picture of me when I was very little,” she whispered fiercely.

  “What makes you so sure?” he demanded.

  “I looked like that.”

  “Small children don’t have strongly defined physical features. Maybe the kid just resembles you.”

  “Like the face in Maryanice’s driver’s license resembles me?” Mariana challenged him.

  “Yes.”

  “No.” Mariana shook her head vigorously. She immediately regretted it and closed her eyes against the reinvigorated throbbing of the headache. She pressed the heels of her hands against her temples. “No,” she repeated calmly. “I think I must know Maryanice Roualt. But I’m sure that’s my photograph in her wallet. I had a doll just like the one in the picture. I kept it on my bed for years. I still have it, back in my house in Arizona. It’s on the shelf with family keepsakes.” She hesitated. “It’s my oldest, dearest childhood toy.”

  “It couldn’t be that Maryanice had one just like it?” he suggested, for the sake of argument. He had no idea who the hell Maryanice Roualt was...assuming she wasn’t Mariana Sands, which, objectively speaking, he had yet to prove.

  “I remember the tricycle, too. And...”

  He maneuvered her over to her bed.

  “Lie down,” he murmured. “I’ll fix your headache.”

  She looked a little surprised and blushed.

  He grinned and pressed her down onto the bed. Laying the palms of his hands on either side of her shoulders, he lowered himself just enough to press his mouth lightly against hers. A long, slow, languorously sensuous moment later, he lifted his li
ps from hers.

  “This wasn’t what I meant when I said I’d fix your headache,” he teased her huskily. “But I’m willing to try this method, if that’s what you think will work.”

  She laughed and felt the heat of embarrassment rush to her cheeks. “I like your kisses,” she admitted shyly.

  “And I.” he murmured, kissing her lingeringly, “I like yours.”

  He tried to remember what they were supposed to be doing. Something about fixing her headache and traveling to Maryland. He heard Mariana sigh his name, and suddenly the other things didn’t seem nearly so urgent.

  Chapter 11

  The scent of her skin filled his senses with every breath he drew. Soft and light and clean, like the mountain air in early spring. He was intoxicated by her. Each drugging kiss compounded her dizzying effect on him. He tightened his arms around her, and his entire body savored the increased closeness to her. He reveled in the sensation of pressing against her shape, of inhaling her unique and inexplicably enticing essence. Her soft and yielding form silently admitted to him that she was feeling much the same toward him as he was toward her. A fierce rush of male satisfaction surged through him. That she wanted him was the sweetest part of this moment. If there was such a thing as pure, unadulterated pleasure, he was feeling it wash through him now, Owen thought lightheartedly.

  The taste of her mouth made him hunger for more kisses. Deeper kisses. Longer kisses. Endless, rich, warm, wet kisses. Where mouth mated with mouth and tongue entangled lovingly with tongue. Where his arm held her close to him, breast to chest, abdomen to belly, thigh to thigh. He moved his mouth against hers, and she followed him hungrily, unwilling to ease the fiercely tender assault.

  He murmured reassurances against her lips. Nuzzled her neck. Sucked air as he felt her lips caress his earlobe. Grasped her head firmly and found her mouth again.

  His tongue traced the entrance, teasing the inner surfaces, incrementally sliding closer and closer. Teasing. Probing. Retreating. He smiled as she surged toward him, opening hungrily to his threatened invasion. He swept across the moist warmth as she instinctively yielded to him.

  Her warm and honest response cracked some of the shields he had encased himself in long ago.

  “Mariana,” he whispered against her soft lips. He wanted to say more than her name, but what could he truthfully say to her? That he ached for her. She knew that already. That he burned for her? She was kissing the hot skin of his face. Surely she felt his heat. In the end, it seemed more honest just to reverently murmur her name. And Owen prized honesty above all else in life. “Mariana...” he murmured, rubbing his lips across her cheeks in tender awe.

  Mariana looked into his eyes, and all her swirling, chaotic feelings swam there in the dark green depths. She looked at him as if she’d just discovered him, had never really seen him before, as if he were some Greek god come down to awaken her and bring her to life.

  Owen had never been the recipient of that kind of look, and for a moment he was stunned. Then she half closed her eyes and kissed him with all the tender, trusting, overwhelming feelings that he aroused in her. When he kissed her back, she moaned softly in welcome and showers of hot fireworks shot off all over his skin, from his mouth, across his chest and arms, rocketing through his hips and thighs and deep into the depths of his loins.

  Owen slanted his mouth against hers, adding then easing the pressure in slow, rhythmic fashion. He wanted to go on forever, but dimly he was aware of the hardening bite of desire.

  He broke off the kiss suddenly. Gasped for cool air. And for some faint hope of cool reason.

  “I should have known better than to have touched you again,” he whispered, his voice harsh from the effort he was exerting to crush his biting frustration upon releasing her.

  “I let you....” she said shakily, then laughed unsteadily. “I helped you.”

  “I don’t remember kissing having quite this effect on me,” he observed, trying to inject a little humor in an effort to dampen his eagerness for her. The humor did nothing to soften the hardness of his contours, she quickly realized.

  Mariana laughed, but she was trembling with reaction and the laughter sounded strained.

  “Well, that’s what I was thinking myself,” she admitted. “We just must be particularly biologically well matched,” she murmured.

  He looked at her in surprise and then, slowly, grinned. “Yes. I think you could say that.”

  Mariana blushed and lowered her gaze to his chest. Against her own better judgment, she succumbed to the desire to look at his face one more time. She gently traced the line of his jaw, the slight creases in his cheeks and beside his eyes.

  Her fingertip was infinitely gentle. And tender. Cool against his heated skin. Owen exhaled a slow, painful breath. When she laid her palm against his cheek, he turned his face into it, kissing its center. He felt her small tremor of response. That small gesture fanned the flames that had never cooled in spite of his determination to douse them.

  Groaning, Owen buried his face against her neck, trying to recall where in the hell he’d buried the rational elements of his brain. They’d gone missing in action the moment he’d kissed her. He wondered if this was some form of early-onset dementia. His wits had never completely deserted him before with other women. Then again, he’d never felt like this about other women. Not any woman.

  He inhaled and the indescribably seductive scent of her skin filled his nostrils once again. Every red-blooded cell of his utterly male body surged to attention. He became excruciatingly aware of the delectable imprint of her feminine form against his. Stretched out, they were shoulder to shoulder, belly to belly, thigh to thigh. Every inch of him pulsed with awareness. Although she was wearing clothes, he was tantalizingly aware of the shape of her breasts, the curve of her hips and the hidden valley between her thighs.

  “We’ve gotta cut this out,” he murmured unconvincingly.

  “Uh-huh,” she barely managed to whisper.

  Somehow, he couldn’t quite find the strength to take his hands off her.

  “In just a minute...” he promised, caressing her with slow, sweeping strokes that went the length of her body and back.

  She wriggled beneath him, snuggling against him with her whole self. Owen gritted his teeth against the heavy surge of ecstasy that rocked through him.

  Mindlessly, he slid his hand between their bodies, cupping the soft shape of her breasts, stroking one then the other, as she helplessly twisted, trying to follow his touch.

  He tugged her shirt loose from the waist of her slacks, fumbled momentarily with the back fastening of her bm and then gently pushed it aside. He covered her bare breast with one hand, stroking the sensitive skin with his thumb. Beneath his palm he could feel the stiffly pouting nipple, awaiting his fingertip’s featherlight caress, which he unhesitatingly supplied.

  Mariana moaned and moved beneath him. He urgently found her mouth again with his.

  She wrapped her arms around him, holding him close, desperately aching for even more intimate closeness, although she knew that it would be a big mistake to succumb to the demands of her heart and body. She slid her hands beneath his shirt and ran them slowly, lovingly, up and down his sinewy back. She felt the muscles flex and bunch. She felt the burning heat of his skin. Owen, she silently cried out. Oh, Owen, what is happening to me? What are you doing to me? My heart is breaking, and yet I feel like I’m being born again. Owen...Owen...

  He pushed his knee between her legs and captured her thigh between his. He squeezed her tightly and rolled over, pulling her on top of him, without ever losing contact with her mouth. His tongue swept through the dark, sensitive regions, conquering and being conquered in return.

  She had been well aware of how aroused he was becoming, but now the unyielding tumescence pressed against her crotch demanded a choice.

  Owen made it for both of them.

  With a long, painful, very regretful sigh, he broke off the kiss and pulled her head against his sh
oulder.

  “Do you suppose a man can die of frustration?”

  She hugged him tenderly. “I hope not,” she replied fervently.

  They lay there a few moments, letting the warmth of each other’s arms ease the slowly receding pain of unsatisfied passion.

  Finally, Mariana propped herself up on his chest and looked down into his storm-darkened eyes.

  “Do you know how you make me feel?” she asked him softly.

  “How?” He looked at her lips, then he dragged his gaze back to her eyes by sheer force of will.

  “You make me feel fully, completely, irrevocably alive.”

  She kissed him tenderly on the lips, but lifted her mouth before either of them could surrender to the almost irresistible temptation to assuage their desire in the age-old way.

  “When I’m with you, I feel my heart beating,” she said softly. “I feel the breeze on my skin. I’m aware of my own existence. something I used to take for granted and never gave any thought to.” She laid her hand on his cheek and gazed lovingly into his hard, chiseled face. “When you kiss me, lights go on all over. When you touch me, it’s like turning on the electricity inside my heart. Everything sizzles.” Color blushed attractively across her cheekbones, and she laughed a little in embarrassment. “You make me feel like a woman, Owen. Vibrant and alive with all kinds of possibilities in life.” She swallowed and looked at his chin. “I hope...I’m not embarrassing you by telling you this.”

  He captured her chin with his hand and forced her to look into his eyes. They were serious.

  “How could I be embarrassed?” he asked her huskily. “You make me feel the same way.” He grinned a little. “Only, in my case, you make me feel like an electrified man.”

  She giggled and lay down on him, relaxing as he held her loosely in his arms again.

  “We seem to be connected to the same high-voltage circuit,” he murmured, resting his chin against her head.

  Mariana felt the slight tremor in his body as she gently rolled off him and curled up against his side. A similar tremor passed through her. She was still shaking with desire for him, she realized.