by Linda Howard
“I’d have opted for killing him,” Quinlan said tonelessly. “I may yet.”
“After that, it was all so easy,” she murmured, ignoring him. “I just packed my suitcases and walked out. The doorman saw me and reached for the phone…and then stopped. He looked at my eye and let the phone drop back into the cradle, and then he opened the door for me and asked if he could call a cab for me. When I told him I didn’t have any money, he pulled out his wallet and gave me forty dollars.
“I went to a shelter for abused women. It was the hardest, most humiliating thing I’ve ever done. It’s strange how the women are the ones who are so embarrassed,” she said reflectively. “Never the men who have beaten them, terrorized them. They seem to think it was their right, or that the women deserved it. But I understand how the women feel, because I was one of them. Its like standing up in public and letting everyone see how utterly stupid you are, what bad judgment you have, what horrible mistakes you’ve made. The women I met there could barely look anyone in the eye, and they were the victims!
“I got a divorce. It was that simple. With the photographs taken at the shelter, I had evidence of abuse, and Eric would have done anything to preserve his reputation. Oh, he tried to talk me into coming back, he made all sorts of promises, he swore things would be different. I was even tempted,” she admitted. “But I couldn’t trust my own judgment any longer, so the safest thing, the only thing to do was stay away from romantic relationships in general and Eric Landers in particular.”
God, it was so plain now. Quinlan could barely breathe with the realization of the mistakes he’d made in dealing with her. No wonder she had pulled away from him. Because he’d wanted her so much, he had tried to take over, tried to coddle and protect her. It was a normal male instinct, but nothing else could have been more calculated to set off her inner alarms. When she had needed space, he had crowded her, so determined to have her that he hadn’t let anything stand in his way. Instead of binding her to him, he had made her run.
“I’m not like Landers,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll never abuse you, Elizabeth, I swear.”
She was silent, and he could sense the sadness in her. “How can I trust you?” she finally asked. “How can I trust myself? What if I make the wrong decision about you, too? You’re a much stronger man than Eric could ever hope to be, both physically and mentally. What if you did try to hurt me? How could I protect myself? You want to be in charge. You admit it. You’re dominating and secretive. God, Quinlan, I love you, but you scare me to death.”
His heart surged wildly in his chest at her words. He had known it, but this was the first time she had actually said so. She loved him! At the same time he was suddenly terrified, because he didn’t see any way he could convince her to trust him. And that was what it was: a matter of trust. She had lost confidence in her own ability to read character.
He didn’t know what to do; for the first time in his life he had no plan of action, no viable option. All he had were his instincts, and he was afraid they were all wrong, at least as far as Elizabeth was concerned. He had certainly bungled it so far. He tried to think what his life would be like without her, if he never again could hold her, and the bleakness of the prospect shook him. Even during these past hellish months, when she had avoided him so totally, even refusing to speak to him on the phone, he hadn’t felt this way, because he had still thought he would eventually be able to get her back.
He had to have her. No other woman would do. And he wanted her just as she was: elegant, acerbic, independent, wildly passionate in bed. That, at last, he had done right. She had burned bright and hot in his arms.
He suspected that if he asked for an affair, and only that, she would agree. It was the thought of a legal, binding relationship that had sent her running. She had acted outraged when he had mentioned marriage and kids, getting all huffy because he hadn’t included her in the decision-making, but in truth it was that very thing that had so terrified her. Had she sensed he had been about to propose? Finding the file had made her furious, but what had sent her fleeing out the door had been the prospect that he wanted more than just a sexual relationship with her. She could handle being intimate with him; it was the thought of giving him legal rights that gave her nightmares.
He cleared his throat. He felt as if he were walking blindfolded through a mine field, but he couldn’t just give up. “I have a reason for not talking about myself,” he said hesitantly.
Her reply was an ironic, “I’m sure you do.”
He stopped, shrugging helplessly. There was nothing he could tell her that wouldn’t sound like an outrageous lie. Okay, that had been a dead end.
“I love you.”
The words shook him. He’d admitted the truth of it to himself months ago, not long after meeting her, in fact, but it had been so long since he’d said them aloud that he was startled. Oh, he’d said them during his marriage, at first. It had been so easy, and so expected. Now he realized that the words had been easy because he hadn’t meant them. When something really mattered, it was a lot harder to get out.
Elizabeth nodded her head. It had gotten so dark that all he could see was the movement, not her expression. “I believe you do,” she replied.
“But you still can’t trust me with your life.”
“If I needed someone to protect me from true danger, I can’t think of anyone I would trust more. But for the other times, the day-to-day normal times that make up a true lifetime, I’m terrified of letting someone close enough to ever have that kind of influence on me again.”
Quinlan took another mental sidestep. “We could still see each other,” he suggested cautiously. “I know I came on too strong. I’ll hold it down. I won’t pressure you to make any kind of commitment.”
“That wouldn’t be fair to you. Marriage is what you want.”
“I want you,” he said bluntly. “With or without the legal trappings. We’re great in bed together, and we enjoy each other’s company. We have fun together. We can do that without being married, if that’s all that’s making you shy away from me.”
“You want to have an affair?” she asked, needing to pin him down on his exact meaning.
“Hell, no. I want everything. The ring, the kids, all of it. But if an affair is all I can have, I’ll take it. What do you say?”
She was silent a long time, thinking it over. At last she sighed and said, “I think I’d be a fool to make any decision right now. These aren’t normal circumstances. When the power is back on and our lives are back to normal, then I’ll decide.”
Quinlan had always had the knack of cutting his losses. He took a step toward her. “But I still have tonight,” he said in a low tone. “And I don’t intend to waste a minute of it.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was much as it had been that other night, and yet it was much more intense. Quinlan made love to her until she literally screamed with pleasure, and then loved her past her embarrassment. The darkness wrapped around them like a heated cocoon, suspending time and restrictions, allowing anything to be possible. The hours seemed endless, unmarked as they were by any clock or other means that civilized man had developed. The streets outside remained dark and mostly empty; he didn’t turn on the radio again, because he didn’t want the outside world to intrude, and neither did she.
It was too hot to sleep, despite the high ceiling in the lobby that carried the heat upward. They lay on the cushions and talked, their voices not much more than slow murmurs in the sultry heat. Quinlan’s big hands never left her bare body, and Elizabeth suspended her thoughts for this one magic night. She became drowsy, but all inclination to sleep fled when he turned to her in the thick, heated darkness, pressing down on her, his callused hands stroking and probing until she writhed on the cushions. His lovemaking was as steamy as the night, as enveloping. In the darkness she had no inhibitions. She not only let him do as he wanted with her, she reveled in it. There wasn’t an inch of her body that he didn’t explore.
&n
bsp; Daylight brought sunlight and steadily increasing temperatures, but the power remained off. Even though she knew it was impossible to see inside through the glazed windows, she was glad that they could remain snugly hidden in their own little lair. They drank water and ate, and Elizabeth insisted on washing off again in the smothering heat of the rest room, though she knew it wouldn’t do any good to clean up with Quinlan waiting impatiently for her outside. Did the man never get tired?
She heard other voices and froze, panicking at the thought of being caught naked in the rest room. Had the power come back on? Impossible, because it was dark in the bathroom. Or had the guard cut off the lights in here before he’d left the day before? She hadn’t even thought to check the switch.
Then she heard a familiar call sign and relaxed. The radio, of course. A bit irritated, with herself for being scared and with him because he’d caused it, she strode out of the rest room. “I nearly had a heart attack,” she snapped. “I thought someone had come in and I was caught in the rest room.”
Quinlan grinned. “What about me? I’m as naked as you are.”
He was still sprawled on the cushions, but somehow he looked absolutely at home in his natural state. She looked down at herself and laughed. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
He stared to say, It’ll be something to tell our grandkids, but bit the words back. She wouldn’t want to hear it, and he’d promised he wouldn’t push her. He held out his hand to her, and she crawled onto the cushions with him, sinking into his arms.
“What was on the news?”
“A relatively quiet night in Dallas, though there was some sporadic looting. The same elsewhere. It was just too damn hot to do anything very strenuous.”
“Oh, yeah?” she asked, giving him a sidelong glance.
He laughed and deftly rolled her onto her back, mounting her with a total lack of haste that demonstrated how many times during the night he’d done the same thing. “The news?” she prompted.
He nuzzled her neck, breathing in the sweet woman scent. “Oh, that. The national guard has been mobilized from Texas to the East Coast. There were riots in Miami, but they’re under control now.”
“I thought you said things were relatively quiet?”
“That is quiet. With electricity off in almost a quarter of the country, that’s amazingly quiet.” He didn’t want to talk about the blackout. Having Elizabeth naked under him went to his head faster than the most potent whiskey. He kissed her, acutely savoring her instant response, even as he positioned her for his penetration and smoothly slid within. He felt the delicious tightening of her inner muscles as she adjusted to him, the way her fingers dug into his shoulders as she tried to arch even closer to him. His feelings for her swamped him, and he found himself wishing the electricity would never come back on.
Afterward, she yawned and nestled down on his shoulder. “Did the radio announcers say when the power company officials thought the power would be back on?”
“Maybe by this afternoon,” he said.
So soon? She felt a bit indignant, as if she had been promised a vacation and now it had been cut short. But this wasn’t a vacation; for a lot of people, it was a crisis. Electricity could mean the difference between life and death for someone who was ill. If all they had was a few more hours, she meant to make the best of them.
It seemed that he did, too. Except for insisting that they regularly drink water, he kept her in his arms. Even when he finally tired and had to take a break from lovemaking, he remained nestled within her body. Elizabeth was too tired to think; all she could do was feel. Quinlan had so completely dominated her senses that she would have been alarmed, if she hadn’t seen the same drugged expression in his eyes that she knew was in hers. This wasn’t something he was doing to her; it was something they were sharing.
They dozed, their sweaty bodies pressed tightly together despite the heat.
It was the wash of cool air over her skin that woke her, shivering.
Quinlan sat up. “The power’s back on,” he said, squinting up at the overhead lights that seemed to be glaring after the long hours without them. He looked at his watch. “It’s eleven o’clock.”
“That’s too soon,” Elizabeth said grumpily. “They said it would be this afternoon.”
“They probably gave themselves some extra time in case something went wrong.”
Feeling incredibly exposed in the artificial light, Elizabeth scrambled into her clothing. She looked at her discarded panty hose in distaste and crumpled them up, then threw them into the trash.
“What do we do now?” she asked, pushing her hair back.
Quinlan zipped his pants. “Now we go home.”
“How? Do we call the guard service?”
“Oh, I’ll call them all right. Later. I have a few things to say. But now that the power’s on, I can get us out of here.”
While he tapped into the security system,Elizabeth hastily straightened the furniture, shoving it back into place and restoring all the cushions to their original sites. A blush was already heating her face at the possibility of anyone finding out about their love nest, literally in the middle of the lobby. She didn’t know if she would ever be able to walk into this building again without blushing.
Quinlan grunted with satisfaction as he entered a manual override into the system that would allow him to open the side door. “Come on,” he said, grabbing Elizabeth’s hand.
She barely had time to snatch up her purse before he was hustling her out of there. She blinked in the blinding sunshine. The heat rising off the sidewalk was punishing. “We can’t just leave the building unlocked,” she protested.
“I didn’t. It locked again as soon as the door closed.” Taking her arm, he steered her around the corner and across the street to the parking deck.
Before she could react, he was practically stuffing her into his car. “I have my own car!” she said indignantly.
“I know. Don’t worry, it isn’t going anywhere. But we don’t know that the electricity is on all over the city, and we don’t know what kind of situation you’ll find at your place. Until I know you’re safe, I’m keeping you with me.”
It was the sort of high-handed action that had always made her uneasy in the past, but now it didn’t bother her. Maybe it was because she was so sleepy. Maybe it was because he was right. For whatever reason, she relaxed in the seat and let her eyes close.
He had to detour a couple of times to reach her apartment, but the traffic was surprisingly light, and it didn’t take long, not even as long as normal. She didn’t protest when he went inside with her. The electricity was on there, too, the central air conditioning humming as it tried to overcome the built-up heat.
“Into the shower,” Quinlan commanded.
She blinked at him. “What?”
He put his arm around her, turning her toward her bedroom. “The shower. We’re both going to take a nice, cool shower. We’re in good shape, but this will make us feel better. Believe me, we’re a little dehydrated.”
Their bargain had been only for the night, but since it had already extended into the day, she supposed it wouldn’t hurt to carry it a little further. She allowed him to strip her and wasn’t at all surprised when he undressed and climbed in with her. The shower spray was cool enough to raise a chill, and it felt wonderful. She turned around to let it wash over her spine and tilted her head back so the water soaked through her sweat-matted hair.
“Feel good?” he murmured, running his hands over her. She would have thought that he was washing her, except that he wasn’t using soap.
“Mmm.” He bent his head and Elizabeth lifted hers. If only she could stay this way, she thought. Kissing him, being kissed by him. His hard arms locked around her. Feeling him so close, all worries pushed aside…
The cool shower was revitalizing in more ways than one. Abruptly he lifted her and braced her against the wall, and she gasped as he drove deep into her. There was nothing slow about it this time;
he took her fiercely, as wild as he had been the day before on the floor of the lobby, as if all those times in between had never been.
Later they went to bed. She could barely hold her eyes open while he dried her hair, then carried her to the bed and placed her between the cool, smooth sheets. She sighed, every muscle relaxing, and immediately went to sleep, not knowing that he slipped into bed beside her.
Still, she wasn’t surprised when she woke during the afternoon and he was there. Lazily she let her gaze drift over his strong-boned features. He needed to shave; the black beard lay on his skin like a dark shadow. His hair was tousled, and his closed eyelids looked as delicate as a child’s. Odd, for she had never thought of Quinlan as delicate in any way, never associated any sort of softness with him. Yet he had been tender with her, even in his passion. It wasn’t the same type of gentleness Eric had displayed; Eric had been gentle, she realized now, because he hadn’t wanted any responding passion from her. He had wanted her to be nothing more than a doll, to be dressed and positioned and shown off for his own ego. Quinlan, on the other hand, had been as helpless in his passion as she had been in hers.
Her body quivered at his nearness. Still half asleep, she pushed at him. His eyes opened immediately, and he rolled onto his back. “What’s wrong?”
“Plenty,” she said, slithering on top of him and feeling the immediate response between his legs. “It’s been at least—” She paused to look at the clock, but it was blinking stupidly at her, not having been reset since the power had come back on. “It’s been too damn long since I’ve had this.” She reached between his legs, and he sucked in his breath, his back arching as she guided him into place.
“God, I’m sorry,” he apologized fervently, and bit back a moan as she moved on him. This was the way he had always known his Elizabeth could be, hot with uncomplicated passion, a little bawdy, intriguingly earthy. She made him dizzy with delight.
