by Anne Stuart
“Take off your clothes,” he said, and his voice was rough in the moonlit darkness, rough and caressing.
She obeyed, pulling the baggy sweater over her head, skimming her jeans down over her hips and kicking them away. She reached up to undo the front clasp of her thin scrap of a bra, but his large hand covered hers, stopping her, and he drew her closer, putting his hot, wet mouth over her breast, suckling it through the wisp of lace that covered her.
His hands slid down her sides, along her hips beneath the silk panties, cupping her, pulling her against him. Her knees felt weak, trembly, her heart was racing, her pulses were full and flowing. She was overwhelmed with longings so fierce, so intense that she was afraid she might fly apart. She needed him, all of him, in every way possible. She wanted him hard and fast, she wanted him slow and lingering. She wanted forever. And she only had one more night.
He kicked out of the rest of his clothes and pulled her over to the bed. She lay down with him, leaning over him as he lay back against the pillows, and her hair was a curtain around them, shutting out the cold February night. She kissed his lips, running her tongue along the firm edges of his mouth as he tried to kiss her back. She moved her mouth down the tautly muscled planes of his chest, touching, tasting, savoring him, storing a thousand sensations inside her. She kissed his stomach, his navel, his hips. And then she put her mouth on him, feeling him jerk with surprise, his hands threading her hair, holding her there, gently, as she loved him, she loved him, and she never wanted it to end.
She was trembling, covered with sweat, when he pulled her away, and she fought for a moment. “Wait,” she said. “I want to…”
“I want to come inside you,” Rafferty said. “Not just your mouth. I need all of you. Now.” He pulled her up and over him, so that she lay full-length on top of him, her hands clutching his shoulders.
He reached up and unfastened the bra she was still wearing. He pulled off her silk panties, roughly, and threw them off the bed. “I don’t want to hurt you again,” he said. “But I can’t help it. It’s too soon…”
“Show me,” she said, overriding his concern. “We only have a few more hours. Show me what to do.”
He groaned, and his last attempt at restraint vanished as he reached between her legs to the heated, aching center of her. She arched against his hand, whimpering softly with pleasure, and in the darkness he smiled, murmuring to her, telling her how sweet and responsive she was, how soft and sleek and damp and hot she was, and how much he needed, wanted her.
“Slowly, love,” he whispered as he positioned her above him, throbbing and ready. “Very slowly. Make it last. God, Helen…” the words were a jumble of pleasure as she followed his lead, sinking slowly, filling herself with his strength.
There was no pain this time. Just a tightness, a stretching, followed by the most glorious burgeoning inside her as she flowed around him, her heart bursting, her soul in flight as he held her hips in his big hands and showed her a slow, steady rhythm that was likely to drive her mad. His control was greater than hers. When she was ready to shake apart, reaching for something beyond her grasp, he simply rolled her over on the bed, covering her, surging against her with a slow, steady pace that made her want to scream, to pound at his shoulders and weep.
And suddenly his control was gone as well, and he thrust into her, again and again, in a frenzy of need that brought forth her own wild response, and when he went rigid in her arms, his body arched against hers, his voice lost in a strangled cry, she was with him, shattering around him, tossed into the maelstrom of a love that knew no boundaries of time and space, life and death.
His hands were still tight on her, and she hoped he’d leave a mark, a bruise, anything to hold on to after he left. Something to remind herself that he’d really been here. His face was buried in her hair, his heart still racing against hers, and she wanted to cling so fiercely that all the forces of heaven and hell couldn’t touch him. And death shall have no dominion—where did that line come from, Shakespeare or the Bible? She only wished it were true.
Eventually their breathing slowed. “I’m crushing you,” he muttered into her hair, making no move to get off her.
“I’m glad. Don’t leave.” Her body made an involuntary jerk at her choice of words. “I mean, don’t…”
“I know what you mean.” He lifted his head, looking down at her, and for the first time his face was oddly peaceful. No dark mockery, no secrets lurking behind his eyes. “I didn’t want to do this to you.”
She found she could smile, still wrapped tightly in his embrace. “Really? You could have fooled me.”
He kissed her, lightly touching her tender lips. “I didn’t want to make love to you, and then leave you,” he said patiently. “You deserve so much more….”
“True,” she said, indulging in her own lighthearted mockery, “but I don’t happen to want anyone but you. Will you come back to me? Next year?” She didn’t bother to try to disguise the anxiety and need in her voice. He would have heard it anyway.
“I can’t ask you to wait three hundred and sixty-five days…”
“Three hundred and sixty-three,” she corrected. “And I’ve already waited twenty-nine years for you. What’s another three hundred days, more or less?”
“Helen, I…”
This time she stopped him, putting her fingers against his mouth. “You didn’t want to say that, remember?” she whispered. “Tell me when you come back. I’ll be waiting for you.”
“I don’t want you to…”
“I’ll be waiting,” she said, implacably.
He closed his eyes, fighting it for one more moment. And then he opened them, and there was love and acceptance in the sunlit depths. “I’ll be back.”
“I know you will,” she said, her voice sounding strange and deep to her own ears. “And this lifetime will be for us.” She let her eyes drift closed, unable to keep them open a moment longer.
She didn’t want to sleep. She didn’t want to lose one second, one moment, one breath, one heartbeat. But her body had its own needs, its own wisdom. She’d just survived the most tumultuous forty-eight hours of her life, and she needed rest, renewal, no matter how much she fought against it. She closed her eyes, drinking in the weight of him against her, the scent of his skin, the sound of his breathing. And then she slept.
RAFFERTY WAITED until she was sound asleep, waited until he could wait no longer, and then he pulled out of her arms, gently, lying beside her, watching her in the moonlit darkness as she slept.
The snow had stopped long ago—even before they’d come down from the roof. The time up there seemed strange and distant. He’d never seen so many cops in one place at one time. It was enough to make him nervous.
But he hadn’t been. He’d been too concerned with Helen, her face pale and crumpled, her muscles weak, her eyes wide and loving. Too concerned with his unbreakable date with destiny, and the need to cram every minute of living, of loving, in before he had to go.
He lay in bed with her now, touching her gently, pushing the hair away from her face. He could see a trace of dried tears on her cheeks, and he wanted to taste them. He was so hungry for her, so starved for her, that he could never get enough.
He couldn’t rid himself of his sense of rightness, of belonging. He knew he should regret touching her, taking her, loving her. Knew he should regret the fact that she’d be waiting for him.
But he couldn’t. Logic and should-have-beens had no place in his life. He only knew what was right. And Helen was right, for now and for always. Even if it was only forty-eight hours at a time.
He found himself thinking about Elena. With her pitch-black hair, bright blue eyes, her small, plump body and her old-world ways, she was as far removed from a modern woman like Helen Emerson as she could be.
Where had those words come from? The words of a woman long dead, a woman who’d never been his, except in his heart. Spoken in Elena’s husky voice. The words of the woman he finally loved.
It made no sense, and he was far too weary to try to understand it. He’d fought for years, hoping to make sense of it, and no sense had emerged. He’d learned just to accept each day as it came.
He leaned over and feathered a kiss against Helen’s bee-stung lips. He’d kissed her too hard, too often, and he wanted to kiss her again. But most of all he wanted to simply lie there and watch her, so that the last thing he saw was her peaceful, beautiful, sleeping face. To carry with him into his own tiny share of eternity.
He could feel it coming. It always started with sleep, with a bone-numbing exhaustion sweeping over him, one he was powerless to fight. It was sliding over him like a warm, soft blanket, comforting, enveloping, and even though he wanted to bat it away, to cling more tightly to Helen, he knew it would only make it worse. The best thing he could do for her was let it take him. Let her wake in the morning to an empty bed. And if he was really noble he’d hope that when he came back next year she’d have gone on with her life.
But he wasn’t noble. And he knew she’d be waiting. And he closed his eyes, and let the darkness come.
THE LIGHT WAS BRILLIANT, bright white and blinding. Rafferty opened his eyes, blinking against the glare, covering his eyes with his arm. Beside him he felt someone move, heard a muffled curse.
He yanked his arm away, sitting up with a jerk. He was in the middle of Helen Emerson’s bed, the white sheet pulled up over him, Helen curled up beside him, holding a pillow over her head as she tried to shut out the bright midwinter sun. The clock radio beside the bed said 9:05, and the voice of an announcer was a muffled rush of words.
He reached over and after several false starts managed to turn up the sound. “And it’s another cold winter day in the Windy City,” a man’s voice said. “Sunday, February 15, and if you missed Valentine’s Day this year, there’s always another chance next year. This is Simon Zebriskie on WAKS, with you until eleven o’clock, and if you forgot to tell her you loved her, now’s the time to do so. Maybe this will help.”
Rafferty knew the song. It was an old one, though not as old as he was. “When a Man Loves a Woman.”
He turned back to look at Helen. She’d emerged from the pillow, staring at him in joyous disbelief.
“You’re still here,” she said, her voice rusty.
He didn’t bother to agree. “I love you,” he said.
She smiled then, her smile as blazingly bright as the midwinter sun. “I know you do,” she said, sitting up and holding the sheet around her in a belated show of modesty, and it took him a moment to realize that he was going to have time to teach her not to blush. To show her so many things that she’d become positively brazen. With him alone. “But I don’t think I believe anything else you told me.” Her voice was just the slightest bit uncertain.
“It’s better that way,” he said. “We get to start anew. We’ll get married…”
“We’ll have babies…”
“I’ll find a job…”
“Mel Amberson already offered you one….”
“I love you.”
She leaned over and kissed him, dropping the sheet to her waist. “I love you, too,” she murmured. “And you’re going to love my family.”
Rafferty remembered the small battalion of cops surrounding Helen, and stifled a groan. “Anything’s possible,” he muttered.
“Yes,” she said happily, “it is.” And the bright Chicago sunlight shone down on them through the window as they welcomed all their new tomorrows.
Epilogue
It was one more Valentine’s Day, one year later. Like most Valentine’s Days in Chicago, the day was cold and blustery, a light snow falling. For the first time in sixty-five years there were no more unexpected returns to Clark Street. Everyone, including Ricky Drago’s tortured soul, had found its own kind of peace.
There’d been too many questions and not enough answers. Such as the mystery of a stolen car found dented and hot-wired outside the former site of the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, with no fingerprints inside but those of a crook who’d been dead for almost seven decades.
Or the question of Rafferty’s birth certificate, or any means of any formal identification when Helen and Jamey applied for a marriage license at the end of February. Fortunately a circuit court judge named Clarissa was willing to expedite matters and do them a favor, even if she had to fudge a bit, and the wedding went as planned, with Billy and Mary and Jamey Moretti in attendance, looking uneasily at the assembled, blue-coated Emersons across the aisle.
Rafferty discovered an almost indecent flair for the stock market under Mel Amberson’s tutelage, though he insisted the money wasn’t any cleaner than the stuff he used to make from the infamous Bugs Moran. And he found he had an equal talent for fixing up old houses. Crystal Latour’s old town house began to shine.
Even the glowering assembled Emersons were powerless against Jamey’s determination and charm. Particularly when Helen seemed so happy, how could they begrudge the mysterious upstart who suddenly appeared in their lives?
Ricky Drago’s death was never fully explained, but then, as the state attorney said, who the hell cared? He’d come to a bad end, but one he more than deserved. May God have mercy on his soul.
As for Rafferty, it was all astonishingly clear. He’d spent thirty-four years of his life, sixty-four years of his nebulous afterlife, looking for someone to love him enough to save him. What he’d never realized was that he was the one who needed to find love. Not in another person, but within himself. It was his love for Helen that had saved him. And given him a lifetime of Valentines.
Including the first and most precious. Ms. Anna-belle Emerson Rafferty was born at 3:35 a.m. on the morning of February 14. And big, bold, brave, bad Jamey Rafferty was there, holding Helen’s hand for labor and delivery, longing for the days when all a father had to do was pace and smoke.
And he only passed out once.
Cinderman
by Anne Stuart
Anne Stuart writes:
This one was a hoot. I was in a particularly sassy mood, and I wanted to play off all the clichés of superheroes. My scientist and the heroine, a cocky reporter addicted to wearing wise-ass t-shirts, get caught up in your everyday lab explosion, ending up with superpowers. My poor heroine only gets perfect eyesight out of the deal, but the hero turns invisible from 8 to 9 every morning and evening, and can start fires by wiggling his nose and blinking. Trust me, the invisible thing made for great sex!
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Epilogue
Chapter One
Nancy Drew, she wasn’t. She was a far cry from Brenda Starr, as well. Slinking through the sterile corridors of Beebe Control Systems International, her head down, her eyes focused on her battered sneakers, Suzanna Molloy could feel her heart pounding, her adrenaline pumping, her brain going into overdrive. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for undercover work.
If anyone recognized her, she would be in very deep dog droppings. She was persona non grata around here, having been impertinent enough to ask questions about the corporate structure and political affiliations of the mysterious megacorporation that had sprung up out of nowhere in the last few years, and having compounded her crime by asking those questions in print. Not that a huge multinational complex like BBCSI should be threatened by the small trade newspaper she worked for. After all, the Tech-Sentinel had an excellent reputation for hard-nosed reporting in the scientific field, but that field was, in fact, quite small. BBCSI could squash the Tech-S
entinel flat, if they wanted. And if they made the mistake of thinking no one would notice.
So far, they’d been smart enough to do no more than offer a few warnings, and to refuse to grant Suzanna any interviews. But she wasn’t the mild-mannered sort that took rejection lightly. Not when she had hints of exactly what Dr. Daniel Crompton was working on.
Now she huddled into an oversize lab coat, reminding herself that she needed to walk like a dweeb. Keep her head down, shuffle her feet, maybe even mumble underneath her breath. She’d spent enough of her life among the computer nerds and scientific misfits to be able to pass herself off as one. Just long enough to get herself into Crompton’s private lab. The lab that no one, not even his bosses or assistants, was allowed to enter.
Suzanna Molloy hadn’t gotten where she was by taking no for an answer, she thought, darting a surreptitious glance down the hall. Not that she’d gotten that far by most standards. A two-room apartment in an old Victorian house on the edge of a northern California town, a bank account that kept her in yogurt and a car that had seen better days did not amount to impressive accomplishments in the scheme of things. But they were things she’d accomplished herself. Everything she had, she’d earned—including her reputation.
She wondered if she’d be quite so determined if it were anyone other than Daniel Crompton. She’d met the great Dr. Crompton on several occasions—all public receptions when the BBCSI hadn’t been able to keep the press at bay—and it had hardly been love at first sight. She’d decided early on that Crompton was one of those men whose ego was almost as large as his intellect, and in Crompton’s case that was saying a great deal. The man was legendary—for his brilliance, his youth and his chilly manner. The fact that he wasn’t half-bad to look at only made him better copy.
