by Anne Stuart
She accepted the peace offering, for what it was, unfastening the seat belt and sliding out of the front seat. “Lead on, MacDuff. Let’s just hope we can find some food at this place.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. Besides, you ate an indecent amount at the burger place.”
“Most people eat more than once every twenty-four hours,” she said in a deceptively tranquil voice.
He bit back his instinctive retort. The driveway of the old house was overgrown, neglected for the last few years as the old lady owner of the house had grown older and less observant. With the approaching dusk and the hunter green of the car, it would most likely escape detection, unless someone was looking for it at that particular place, which wasn’t at all likely. As of Thursday afternoon, the old house had been on the market for more than six months, and he was the only one who’d shown the slightest bit of interest.
She said nothing as he led her up the winding driveway to the front door. He wasn’t sure what he expected from her. She looked up at the deserted house with a bleak expression on her face, and he would have given anything for the momentary ability to read her thoughts.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll go around and let you in.”
“You have a key?”
He didn’t bother lying to her. “I know the easiest way to break in.”
If he expected an argument, he didn’t get one. She waited there, patient, quiet, until he opened the front door and drew her into the dusty little hallway.
“The power’s still on,” he said. “There’s a television, if you’re so inclined, and some of the furniture is still here, the worthless stuff. According to the real estate agent the antiques were already sold to—”
“You’re babbling,” Suzanna said, moving past him. “It’s very nice.”
He shut his mouth. “Yes,” he said briefly. She was obviously having a monumental case of sulks because he wouldn’t tell her he was in love with her, and it wasn’t fair, just because he didn’t believe in such things…
“Would you stop it!” she snapped, her temper frayed.
“Stop what?”
“Stop obsessing about not being in love with me! Did I ask you to? Have I been throwing myself at you, declaring my undying devotion, insisting on promises and vows of eternal love? Have I?” she demanded furiously.
“No.”
“Then why do you keep fussing about it? I don’t expect you to love me. I’m certain you’re entirely incapable of it. We’re good in bed, right? What was that lovely phrase you thought of—a certain argumentative compatibility? Why don’t we just strip off our clothes and do it and stop arguing about imaginary things like being in love.”
She looked magnificent, standing there in the dusky shadows, her breasts rising and falling beneath the T-shirt. She looked like the answer to his every dream and more.
“I need a copy of that T-shirt,” he said abruptly.
He’d manage to startle her. “What T-shirt?”
“The one you wore when I saw you for the first time. At the press conference, last summer. Denial Is Not Just a River in Egypt.”
She just stared at him for a moment. “You remember that?”
“I remember everything about you.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
“Nothing I’m ready to say right now.” He moved away from her, coward that he was, and she let him go. “We’ll wait here until after eight o’clock. I’m not sure what we’ll do till then….”
But she was gone. He heard her footsteps on the bare wood floors, and he wondered if she was running away from him. He’d have to go after her—it wasn’t safe. And if he went after her, he might say what he didn’t mean, didn’t believe in, wasn’t ready for…
“Hell and damnation,” he muttered. His brain must have melted under the assault of green slime.
He went into the hallway, following her. She’d gone up the sharply angled staircase—he could hear her in the distance, his oddly acute hearing tuned in to her breathing. He heard the creak of a bed, the rustle of clothing, and he started after her.
The cramp hit him halfway up the second flight, sharp and hard, and he cursed, something brief and obscene, sagging against the wall, waiting for the pain to pass, waiting for his body to fade into nothingness. He didn’t hear her come, but he looked up and she was standing there at the top of the stairs, looking down at him as he held his stomach.
“It must be almost six,” she said.
He shut his eyes for a moment. “I’ll go for a walk,” he said. “As soon as this stops…”
She came up beside him and put her arm through his, tugging him gently upward. “Stop fighting, Daniel.”
“What do you mean?”
“You need to rest. Stop fighting the pain, stop fighting me. Come and lie down. I’ll wake you up when it’s eight. It’ll be easy enough to tell,” she added with a wry smile.
He looked at her. He was already beginning to fade, and he could see from the determined expression on her face that she wasn’t going to let that bother her. She tugged, and he went. She was right—he needed to stop fighting.
“That’s right,” she murmured soothingly. “Just give it up for a couple of hours.” She pulled him into the bedroom at the top of the stairs, and by the time he was through the door he was invisible. “On the bed,” she ordered.
It was most likely a horribly uncomfortable old bed. Even the old lady’s heirs hadn’t wanted it. It was a sagging double bed, with a concave mattress covered by faded ticking, and a plain barred iron headboard that looked as if it belonged in a reformatory. It looked like heaven.
“Just an hour,” he agreed, sinking down on it and closing his eyes in relief. “Wake me at seven, and we’ll talk.”
“I don’t want to talk to you, Daniel,” she said. “I don’t think I’m going to like anything you have to say. Go to sleep,” she said firmly.
He opened his eyes for a moment. She was standing at the foot of the bed, her eyes shadowed. “What are you going to do?”
“Wake you when it’s eight o’clock,” she said gently. And she turned and left the room.
He had never felt so alone in his life. The narrow double bed was huge. He wanted to call after her, to tell her—
The words stopped. She didn’t want to hear them. In his mind, in his voice.
And for once, she was right. He needed to sleep. He’d just about exhausted every last ounce of his reserves.
He’d wake himself up at seven. And then he’d make her listen.
Chapter Sixteen
Suzanna leaned forward and clicked off the black-and-white television set. Mistake number one was turning it on in the first place. She’d done so just in time to hear about the unfortunate demise of Henry Osborn, Daniel Crompton and his unnamed female companion in a fire of suspicious origin, up in an uninhabited tract of woodland in eastern Oregon.
Uncle Vinnie would be frantic. Not to mention Daniel’s elderly parents. The phones were disconnected, and for a brief moment she considered taking the car and driving to the nearest pay phone, just long enough to set Uncle Vinnie’s mind at ease.
And then she remembered what car they had. She hadn’t looked, but if Henry Osborn’s car didn’t come equipped with a cellular phone, she’d turn invisible herself.
It was after seven when she came back from the car. It had taken her ages to figure out how to work the damned thing, and then Uncle Vinnie had asked all sorts of questions that she hadn’t been prepared to answer. She’d finally ended up hanging up on him, after she’d gotten his promise to track down Daniel’s parents and inform them that their son was very much alive. It was the least she could do. She remembered how it felt, twelve hours ago, when she’d knelt in the dirt and mourned his death. She couldn’t let that happen to another human being, not without just cause.
The house was still and silent when she came back in, closing the door behind her. She was cold—she only had her T-shirt and jeans and bare feet, and the
night air was brisk. She looked around for some kind of heat, then realized the most potent form of it was upstairs, asleep. All she had to do was go up to that bedroom and sit in the chair, and Daniel’s inner blaze would warm her chilled bones.
She left the lights off as she went upstairs. The shadows had their customary, unnerving effect, but she decided to play it safe. Despite the fact that the house was deep within the woods, someone might come looking. Now that Uncle Vinnie knew she was somewhere near by, he might be foolish enough to mount a rescue attempt. She didn’t want to involve him any more than she had to.
There was a full moon rising beyond the dusty, multipaned window, and it shone on the empty bed. Except that it wasn’t empty at all. She stood in the doorway, and she could hear his breathing, feel the heat emanating from his flesh. It was hot in the room, wonderfully warm.
And then she noticed the clothes on the floor. His jeans and T-shirt lay in a haphazard pile, which could mean one of two things. Either he’d changed his clothes—and she knew all their extra clothes had burned with the house—or he was lying on the bed, wearing nothing but his hot, smooth skin.
The old springs creaked in the night, and she knew he was awake. “Just as well you can’t see me,” he murmured, his voice low and beguiling.
“Why?”
“You’d blush.”
She could feel color suffuse her face. “I have pale skin,” she protested.
She could feel his silence. Feel his longing. Feel him burning for her. As she burned for him.
“Denial is not just a river in Egypt,” he murmured, and unbelieving she heard the next words, the ones she’d longed for, in his mind.
She couldn’t see him, so she simply closed her eyes. And reaching down, she pulled her T-shirt over her head and sent it sailing onto the floor, where it landed beside his.
The jeans came next. She was wearing plain white cotton bikini panties, and she stripped those off, as well, so that she was standing in the moonlit darkness, naked, vulnerable.
She knew he watched her—she could feel his eyes on her body like a caress, running down her long legs, up over her stomach, cupping her breasts. She tilted her head back, reveling in the heat of his gaze, and her shoulder-length hair trailed down her back. When she looked at the bed again there was a faint, possessive smile on her face.
“You’re an idiot, Dr. Crompton,” she said, moving toward the sagging mattress.
“Why do you say that, Molloy?” He sounded merely curious, but the husky note in his voice betrayed his reaction to her as surely as the sight of him would have.
She stopped beside the bed, feeling the luscious heat wash over her. “Because you’re afraid of the best thing that ever happened to you.”
“I don’t…” he began, but she leaned down, unerringly, putting her hand against his unseen mouth.
“Shut up, Daniel,” she said kindly. “I’ll take care of things.” And she put her mouth where her hand had been.
His mouth was hot, damp, open for her. She threaded her hands through his long hair, and she could feel the stubble of his beard. He hadn’t shaved all day—Osborn had woken them out of an exhausted sleep, and they’d been running so long that she hadn’t even noticed.
She liked the roughness of his cheeks. She drew her mouth away and rubbed her face against his unseen one, still feeling his beard against her tender skin. She was kneeling on the bed beside him, and she felt his hands slide around her waist, hot against her cool skin, and she leaned against him, absorbing the feel of him, the warmth of him, the strength of him.
He tried to tug her down beside him, beneath him, but she held back. “Not this time,” she murmured.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I’ve never had the chance to make love to an invisible man in my life. It seems likely that you’re going to be spending a lot of time in that condition, and I intend to be spending a lot of time with you. I’d better get used to it.”
She let her hands trail down the sides of his face, exploring the feel of him, and let them rest on his bare shoulders.
She let her eyes drift closed. She’d never realized how intensely erotic it could be, touching without seeing. She learned him, the shape and texture of him, as she’d never learned a man before. With only her other senses available, with taste and touch and smell, she had to concentrate on the slightest clues. The pebbled hardness of his flat male nipples, the faint, rasping sound of his breath as she trailed her mouth across his stomach, the tension in his skin, his hands, as he forced himself to let her discover him. When he lay back on the bare mattress, she heard the shift of the springs beneath him. She slid her hands up, to discover he’d wrapped his own strong hands around the iron bedstead. She could feel the pressure, the strength in them, and she smiled, opening her eyes to stare down into nothingness.
“You’re showing wonderful restraint,” she murmured approvingly, leaning forward to brush a kiss against his mouth. She missed her target, landing instead on his chin, but he moved, swiftly, unerringly, his mouth meeting hers, and she could taste his hunger, taste his need.
“Stay like that,” she whispered, learning him with her mouth, letting her lips taste and nibble their way down his smooth, hot chest, past his stomach and the faint roughness of hair. She put her hands around him, gently, and he groaned, and she heard the creak of the springs as he arched beneath her.
He was huge, and hard, and damp for her. He didn’t need to say a word—she knew what he wanted, she could hear his desperate longing in his mind, and it matched her own. She leaned down and put her mouth on him, taking him deep inside, her hands clutching his hips.
He didn’t touch her, and she knew why. If he touched her, he’d take over, and he knew she needed to do this. Needed to take control, to learn him, without fear of the consequences. She needed to do just what she wanted, and she needed him to lie back and let her.
He was shaking. She could feel the trembling in his body, and it matched her own. She wanted him this way, she wanted him every way there was, but she could hear his protest. And then he spoke, his voice raw and strained in the empty darkness.
“Not without you,” he said, and she knew he loved her.
Reluctantly she pulled away, and she could feel his silent cry of pain. And then she slid up, over him, and as she slowly sank down she could feel the iron-hard tension in every muscle in his body, as he controlled his need to surge into her.
He waited until she’d taken him fully. Waited until she leaned forward, her breasts against his hot chest, her hands sliding up his outstretched arms to cover his hands as they clutched the iron railing. He waited while she moved, awkwardly at first, unsure, and then suddenly she was fluid, light and darkness, heat and desire, taking him, owning him, and he was trembling, shaking apart beneath her, and she was trembling, shaking apart, and then the world exploded. She screamed, unable to stop herself, and she was lost, as he finally began to move, thrusting up into her, taking her, filling her with his heat, his seed, his life.
She didn’t want to open her eyes. She could still feel his heart pounding beneath hers, feel the strangled rasp of his breathing as it stirred her hair, still feel him within her body. His hands loosened their fierce hold of the iron bedstead and turned beneath hers, clasping hers, and she wanted to weep at the beauty of it. If she opened her eyes reality would intrude. For now, there were only the two of them, alone in the universe.
SHE MUST HAVE DOZED. She awoke with the room in pitch-blackness, the moon gone behind dark, scudding clouds. Unseen hands were turning her, tucking her next to a fiery body, and she breathed a sigh of pure contentment as his hands pulled her closer.
He leaned forward, his mouth brushing her ear, and she waited for his words of love. “Where are you in your menstrual cycle?” he asked endearingly.
She shoved at him. “Do you have to be quite so practical?”
“S o sue me. I’m a scientist.”
“Not, however, a biologist,” she poin
ted out, glad the darkness hid the blush she knew suffused her face.
“I had a fair amount of pre-med. I didn’t use any protection. I’m no longer worried about other side-effects, but an unplanned pregnancy is still a concern.”
“What other side-effects?” she asked warily.
“I’ve been exposed to something quite extraordinary, something that’s changed my body chemistry. It didn’t seem a wise idea to introduce any fluids into your body without checking.”
“How romantic,” she murmured sarcastically. “What makes you think it’s all right now?”
“I checked.”
“How’d you manage that?”
She didn’t have to see him to recognize the wicked grin in his voice. “I just needed to check a sample under the microscope. Easy enough to procure one. I just closed my eyes and thought of you.”
She didn’t know whether to hit him or kiss him. He was absolutely the most damnable, frustrating, erotic, endearing man on the face of the planet. Even if she was unable to see him for too much of the time.
She let herself relax against him, sliding into his warmth. “They think we’re dead, you know. It was on the television news.”
He didn’t seem surprised. “I heard it on the car radio while you slept.”
“I called Uncle Vinnie and asked him to let your parents know you were all right….”
“You did what?”
He pulled away from her, sitting up in the darkness, and there was no missing the anger in his unseen body, any more than she could miss the faint red glow in his eyes.
She stared in his direction, fascinated. “I can see your eyes glowing,” she murmured.
“The hell with my eyes! Why did you call him?”
“Don’t get into such a swivet. You may not care what people think, but I wasn’t about to have them holding a memorial service for me. I have people who love me. I figure even you do, though it’s hard to imagine. I expect your parents might experience a pang or two if they thought their only child had burned up in a forest fire.” Her voice was caustic.
