“You always did have a temper, only it was so well hidden I was one of the few who ever got to see it.’’
“You deserved to see it. You were rotten, selfish and totally unforgiving.” She drained the rest of the toddy with one big gulp.
“I was all those things. I was also madly in love with you.”
Elise snorted.
“You doubt that?”
“My memory doesn’t extend back that far.” She opened her eyes. “Why are you here?”
“I was worried about you.”
“That’s a first.”
“I thought you didn’t remember back that far.”
“Go away, Sloane.”
“You’re not all right, are you?”
She turned her face up to his. “No, I’m not all right. I haven’t been all right since our friendly little moonlight swim, and I probably won’t be all right until you leave town. There, do you feel happier knowing that?” She stood, opening her arms for his examination. “What you have here, Sloane, is a sexually frustrated middle-aged woman pining for a fantasy lover. It’s a nasty situation. Truly nasty.” She spun around and stalked back into the house, ending up in the kitchen where she poured more milk in the pan to warm.
“Why are you frustrated? Are the men in this town blind?” Sloane was standing behind her, but Elise didn’t turn at his words. “I can’t believe all of them, single and married, aren’t beating a path to your door.”
“Did you see a path?” Elise put her hands on the edge of the stove and leaned against it, staring at the burner. “Do you want the truth? You’ll find it hysterically funny. It’s been years since I’ve made love to a man, and there’s only been one since you left town.”
“Cargil?”
“Does it matter? I’m just a dried-up, unhappy old maid. I’m just what you said I’d be if I stayed in this town. You’ve been vindicated, Sloane. You were right; I was wrong.”
“Elise.” Sloane didn’t know what to say. He was shocked and sick at this waste of a wonderful woman. He was also furious that she’d given herself to that oaf, Cargil, and more furious that she hadn’t found someone worthy to love her. He put his hands on her arms and felt her stiffen, but he didn’t move away. “Why, when you have so much to give?”
“Nobody but you ever saw that,” she said, her words punctuated by peculiar little gulping sounds.
“I’m sure that’s not true.”
“Sloane, the comforter. This is hard to believe.”
Sloane rubbed his hands up and down her arms in a soothing gesture. “What happened tonight to upset you?”
“Nothing that should make me act like such a fool.” Elise watched the milk bubble around the edges of the pan. It was time to turn it off, but she couldn’t make herself move.
“You’re not acting like a fool. You’re upset. Hurt.”
“Let’s not forget lonely. Do you know what that word means? Do you know what it feels like to be a tiny little part of lots of lives but not important to anyone?”
Sloane reached around in front of her and switched off the burner. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him. “You’re tired, cold, wet. Look, you’re shivering. Go upstairs and change. I’ll make you another drink. Then we can talk.”
“I don’t need talk.”
Sloane felt Elise’s words burn right through him. Her eyes were wide with emotion and her control seemed to have completely vanished. “What do you need?” But even before she spoke, he felt his body stir in response to the inevitable answer.
“I need to be loved. Right now. Will you love me, Sloane?”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Elise searched Sloane’s face but there were no clues there. She dropped her gaze to the ground and humiliation drained through her as she turned back to the stove. She wanted to ask him to leave, but her mouth was so dry she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to get the words out. She picked up the milk with a shaking hand and poured it into her cup. This time the whiskey flowed without prior measurement. She just poured until the cup couldn’t hold another drop, and she didn’t even bother adding honey.
“I don’t know what to say,” Sloane said from behind her.
“I got my answer. Please go.”
It took two hands to lift the cup to her mouth. Her first sip was straight Jack Daniels since she hadn’t bothered to stir the drink. It burned a fiery path down her throat and through her chest, and she swallowed convulsively to keep from coughing. She waited for the sound of Sloane’s retreat, but the house remained silent.
She felt his hand on her back, stroking her hair, and as if he’d given a signal, her eyes overflowed. Now, in addition to pleading for lovemaking from a man who obviously didn’t want her, she was crying.
“I don’t need your sympathy,” she snapped at him, her voice unsteady.
“You’ve never had it. My anger, my passion, yes, but never my sympathy.”
“If you’re not feeling sympathy, it must be pity. God, I’ve sunk so low!”
“Stop it, Elise.” Sloane’s fingers gripped her shoulders, and he shook her lightly.
“Get out of here!” Elise slammed the half-filled cup on the stove top and turned to face him. Her fists beat on Sloane’s chest. “Get out of my house!”
He stopped her assault by pulling her tightly against him and crushing her to his chest. Elise cried out, trying desperately to pull away, but he wrapped his arms around her and bent her backward, muffling her mouth against his cheek. Elise struggled, flailing her arms uselessly at her sides where Sloane had them pinned. Whatever was happening was something she had driven him to, not something he had chosen. She wanted no sacrifices, no concessions.
“Stop fighting me.” Sloane held her imprisoned as his mouth bathed her face in kisses. “Calm down and stop fighting me.”
Elise knew she was beyond self-control. She continued to struggle, hoping that he would grow tired and release her. She lifted a knee and aimed it where it would do the most good, but Sloane was too quick for her, thrusting his own leg between hers and clamping it tightly to block her. His arms tightened around her and his mouth continued to soothe her heated face. She managed to inch her hands up to his chest to push against him, but it was like pushing at a wall. She pulled at his clothes, trying ineffectually to scratch him, but her hands were too tightly pressed to his body.
Even in the hysteria that gripped her, Elise realized that Sloane was not going to release her until she stopped fighting. She continued to struggle against him, but the hopelessness of it was apparent to them both. When she was finally exhausted she relaxed against him, her tears soaking the collar of his shirt.
He held her as she cried until there were no tears left. His hands slipped under her hair and covered the length of her back, kneading and stroking it as she leaned against him, her breath coming in dry sobs until the sobs were gone, too.
“How many years have you needed to cry that way?” Sloane rested his cheek against her hair. “How many years have you needed someone to hold you while you did?”
Her anger was gone. She was empty of emotion, and Sloane’s quiet caresses had completed the purge. “Forever,” she whispered, not even sure if the words were loud enough for him to hear.
“Lise, you turn yourself inside out giving to everybody else, and you never take anything for yourself. Not even a good cry. I had to wrestle it out of you.”
She was startled at the nickname; it had been seventeen years since she had heard it.
“I’m all right now.” She pulled away and Sloane let her go. Elise turned to look for something to repair the damage to her tear-streaked face, but Sloane beat her to the sink, soaking the edge of a dish towel with cold water.
“Come here.”
She shook her head, but he ignored her, reaching out to pull her closer. Gently, beginning with her forehead, he rubbed the wet towel over her face. Elise shut her eyes, letting him do as he wished. She could imagine what she looked like, although she was m
uch too drained to care. She could feel the rough terry cloth slide over her nose and around her eyes. He mopped at her cheeks and her chin and then started all over again.
“You can go,” she said when he seemed to have finished. She commanded her voice to be steady and rational even if inside she felt anything but. “I’m sorry I caused such a scene, but I really am all right now.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Sloane leaned back against the sink and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I was issued an invitation, and I haven’t heard a withdrawal.”
Elise hadn’t met Sloane’s gaze since she had asked him to make love to her. Now her eyes shot up to his face in surprise. “Consider it withdrawn.”
“I don’t think so.”
Elise forced a bitter laugh. “Wouldn’t that be something? You’d make love to me, and I’d be so pathetically grateful it would make you feel like God. It would be an experience to remember.”
“It will be an experience to remember.”
“Look, I don’t know what got into me to ask you such a thing, but whatever it was is gone now.”
“Is it?” He reached out, and before she could object he grasped her hand. “Funny, I want you more than I ever have.”
“You didn’t want me. You made that obvious. Do tears and tantrums turn you on?” She tried to pull her hand from his but he wouldn’t let her.
“Didn’t want you?” He laughed softly. “I can’t remember not wanting you. Are you talking about the night at the river? Didn’t I want you then? Or how about the night I came here to settle our past and you greeted me in a sheer white robe with your hair streaming down your back? Didn’t I want you then so badly that I had to get out of here before I lost whatever sense I had?”
“Sloane…”
He brought their clasped hands to her mouth to silence her. “Or tonight? Spitting at me like a drowning cat, that dress clinging to every curve of your body until my insides went liquid. Didn’t I want you then?”
She turned her head. “Don’t.”
“Is that what you really want to say, Lise?”
“I practically threw myself at your feet, and you didn’t say a word!” Elise felt a resurgence of anger, but it died quickly when she looked in Sloane’s eyes.
“I felt like someone was choking the words out of me. Here you were offering me exactly what I wanted, and I knew you were only doing it because you were so distraught. What could I say?”
“Yes.”
Sloane shook his head. “Do I want you hating me when you wake up tomorrow? You don’t give yourself to a man easily. What would it have done to you to give yourself like that?”
Was he handing her a good line or was the concern she saw in his eyes genuine? “Well, now you won’t have to worry.”
“You’re right. Because now when I make love to you, you’ll know it’s my idea, too. It’s what I want.” He pulled her inexorably closer. “Not that you’re not going to want it.”
Elise could feel her heart stop, then begin to pound so fast that the beats merged into one rolling crescendo. “No. Not like this. Not because you know it’s just something I need.”
“Have you ever known me to be charitable? I’ve never forgotten what it feels like to sink inside you and feel your life pulse around me.” He dropped her hand and dug his fingers gently into her waist, pulling her ever closer. “We owe each other this night.”
Only this night? Did she need to be loved that badly? “We don’t owe each other anything.”
“You’re right. ‘Owe’ is the wrong word. It’s not a debt; it’s a gift freely given. I give myself to you, taking what I need in return. You do the same.”
Elise reached up to touch Sloane’s cheeks. She smoothed trembling fingertips over the faint roughness of his skin and down over the luxuriant mustache. Could she let Sloane feed this ache inside her until once more she sated herself? Would one night be enough to help her get on with her life?
“Lise?”
“No one but you has ever called me that.” Elise traced the fine lines around Sloane’s eyes, her fingers memorizing the new additions to a face that was still very much the same. She stroked her thumbs over his eyelids when he closed them. His eyebrows were wiry, and she smoothed them, watching them spring back to life immediately. His hair was of a wiry texture, too. Her fingers fanned out to tangle in it. It was not quite curly, not quite straight. It had a resiliency that wouldn’t change, not even, she suspected, when the few silver strands giving it character turned to many.
It would be so easy to forget everything…
Sloane’s fingers swept up and down her spine. When the rain-cooled wind from the open back door whipped through the kitchen he opened his eyes. “You’re shivering. You need to get out of those wet clothes.”
Elise debated what to do. He was offering her solace, warmth, pleasure. She was an adult and perfectly free to take him up on his offer; she had in fact begged him for this night of lovemaking. So why the hesitancy? Why the doubts?
“I’m all right,” she said, shivering again.
“You’re asking for pneumonia.”
There was not one rational reason to say no. She needed this, and Sloane said he needed it too. They were two consenting adults who—at least on some level—cared about each other. She knew Sloane would be a magnificent lover. She had spent her whole life being afraid to take what she wanted. Tonight, just for this night, she would.
She shivered again, and then laughed a little at the warning in Sloane’s eyes. She felt suddenly much too shy just to invite him to her bedroom. And yet her decision seemed to have been made. They were going to make love. Even saying the words to herself increased the throbbing inside her. What should she do? Go upstairs and change into something dry, then come downstairs only to go back up again later with Sloane? She wasn’t very good at this. She and Sloane had only made love outdoors or in the back seat of his mother’s car. The times she had made love to Bob had been at his house when Amy was away with friends. What was the protocol?
“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” Sloane said softly, as if responding to spoken words instead of thoughts. He brushed his index finger over her cheek and around her ear. “I’m going to take you upstairs and find your bathroom. Then I’m going to run a hot bath for you.”
“And then?” Her eyes focused somewhere right below his.
“And then I’m going to make love to you. And it’s going to be very slow and very gentle and very, very right.” His finger lodged beneath her chin and lifted it a little so that she was looking right at him. “For both of us.”
Elise wasn’t sure that slow and gentle was what she needed. Already she could feel her body’s response to his words. Her nipples tightened and she felt a heated rush in the very core of her. If he could do that with only a few words…
“But first I’m going to kiss you, just the way I’ve wanted to kiss you all evening.” His fingers spread into her hair, and he tugged gently at her chin until her mouth was close to his. She could feel his warm breath against her lips, then his lips hovering against hers, not quite making contact. The first brush of his mouth was so soft, she wasn’t sure it had even happened. Inadvertently she sighed, parting her lips a little as she sought more pressure.
He pulled back to slow their pace and brushed his mouth against hers again. “Do you want more?” he asked.
“You always were an awful tease.” Elise opened her eyes without moving away. “An awful tease and an awful flirt.”
“And you always were so easy to do both with. How could I help myself?”
She smiled a little, aware that Sloane’s words were having just the effect he had clearly intended. She was already less anxious. “You could do anything you wanted with me. I never knew how to stop you. I never wanted to stop you.”
Sloane bent toward her. “I was always too out of control to take it slowly for long.” This time his mouth found hers with more passion. He wet her lips with his tongue then slid it into
her mouth to trace the straight line of her teeth.
Elise clung to him, parting her lips to give him easy access. Up against the full length of his body she could feel him stir to life as one kiss melted into another. Any doubts she’d had about his involvement, his desire, were put to rest. Sloane wanted her; this was not charity. Their lovemaking might be slow and gentle, but it wouldn’t be passionless.
He sucked lightly on her full bottom lip, then took it between his teeth and tugged gently. Elise could feel the tugging deep inside her as if everything was connected, one part of her a conduit of sensation for another.
“What are you smiling about?” Sloane asked, pushing away from the sink so that they were standing straight but still touching.
Elise slipped her arms around his neck and pulled his head back down to hers. “I was wondering how anyone could top the miracle of the human body.”
Sloane laughed and scooped her into his arms, swinging her feet off the ground as he did. “Even soaking wet you don’t weigh as much as you did when you were eighteen.”
“You’re just stronger.”
“Let’s go upstairs.”
He held her off the ground, walking to the steps where he set her down. Obediently Elise turned and began her climb, then returned to the bottom to grasp Sloane’s hand and pull him up with her. “After telling me we were coming up here, were you waiting for an invitation?”
“Exactly.”
She realized he’d been giving her one more chance to back out. She was surprised at his patience. Sloane had never been patient, and she was grateful for this new sensitivity. It strengthened her resolve and heightened her desire. “I only issue one invitation,” she said, her voice provocative.
“But that one wasn’t specifically for your bed.”
Elise squeezed his hand. “You’re right. I’d intended to knock you to the kitchen floor and have my way with you between the sink and the refrigerator.’’
In the second-floor hallway she paused outside the bathroom door. The idea of a hot bath was a good one, but she wondered if the time away from Sloane would give the doubts she was suppressing a chance to reassert themselves. “I’m warmer now,” she said hesitantly. “I don’t think I need a bath. I just need to get out of these clothes.”
Season of Miracles Page 13
