A Solitary Heart

by Amanda Carpenter

  “Sure,” she agreed as she pretended her attention was fixed on the change in sets as the curtains rose again. All of her awareness, however, was focused on the long tendoned fingers curled around hers. Then she said softly, “Thank you again for having us. Everybody’s having a wonderful time.”

  His fingers tightened. He replied, “It was all done for purely selfish reasons, I’m afraid. Will you come again?”

  She turned to him, with a wide searching gaze in which the colourful stage lights flickered like tiny rainbows over the clear green depths. Her hand, in his, was very still. He watched her closely as she licked her lips and finally murmured, “I’m not sure how easy it would be to co-ordinate the time after the others start their jobs.”

  His predator’s gaze held coiled patience. “I wasn’t inviting the others.”

  The play rollicked on, unnoticed. She said nothing, just staring up him, but the slim fingers lying in his clasp quivered once. “Sian,” he said then, carefully, “why are you so afraid?”

  She shook her head and would not answer.

  His mouth hardened, but still he was careful. “Will you come anyway? I’d take you dancing, and we could go to the movies, or to the park, or maybe spend an afternoon at the Art Institute. And I know when you meet them tomorrow night you’ll like my friends every bit as much as I like yours.”

  But underlying every picture he painted was the real question, the heart of the question. Will you come? How could she answer? That she wanted to, certainly, but that she was afraid as well, which he already knew. For every reason there was a caution, and for every caution, the dangerous, heedless desire to fling them to the winds.

  “I don’t know,” she said helplessly.

  Her distress was obvious. He leaned over and brushed his lips against her cheek. “There’s no hurry to decide,” he murmured languidly in her ear. “We’ve all the time in the world. Just promise me you’ll think about it.”

  And, because he had not pressed her for an answer but was instead considerate and understanding, just as he always was when he was playing the friend, she found that it was easy to meet him that far. “A-all right.”

  Matt nodded and turned his attention back to the play. Well, she thought, that was remarkably painless. She’d answered with no answer at all, which left her the freedom to vacillate as much as she wanted. Sooner or later he would want a real reply, but that was a consideration that could be put off to the foggy, indefinite future.

  Besides, she found that his invitation asked more questions than it answered. All he had really done was to invite her back for another visit. He could have done the same to any one of his male friends.

  Except that she wasn’t one of the guys, and Matt had not invited anyone else, just her. Just her and him, together, doing things that couples do, dancing, eating out, visiting friends, walking in the park. Making love?

  He hadn’t asked her that, had he? This was the crux of the matter, the whole entire problem, the mote in her eye that was a tiny, secretive image of their bodies locked together in consummative passion.

  She could always make the stipulation that if she came, she would stay in the guest-room. Then he might get offended and withdraw the invitation—how crass!—or he might agree blandly—how deflating—or he might even look at her in surprise, as if to suggest that he hadn’t been considering anything else—how embarrassing. Or he might—just might—with adroit and dexterous skill set himself to changing her mind.

  Which, oh dear, brought her back to the bedroom scene again.

  All right, then. She would tell him no, the first chance she got. That settled things, didn’t it? That put an end to the dilemma once and for all, for she didn’t think that he would offer again.

  And she would go home with the others on Sunday after telling Matt goodbye, thanks very much for a super time, it’s been swell. She would get back to her life, go to graduate school in the autumn, just as she’d planned, and everything would revert to the normal, placid, complacent existence it had been before. No uncertainties, relatively little stress, no fast and hilarious repartee, no thrill of excitement, no burgeoning delight in her femininity, no fascination, no Matthew.

  Ever.

  Damn the man, and damn his confounding habit of getting under her skin. He was to blame for the quandary she found herself in—if only he had stated, when he had asked her, just what he expected from her, then she wouldn’t be tying herself into knots over this, would she?

  It was really very simple—how could she say yes or no when he was so busy being clever and oblique? She sat very still and quietly worked herself into an almighty fume, then started violently when the lights came up and the audience rose to their feet, clapping and whistling.

  She had missed the entire second half of the play. It had vanished in a puff of sulphur, and she had so enjoyed the first part as well.

  That, too, could be laid at Matt’s door. When they went to a late supper at an Italian restaurant, her bad temper couldn’t be contained. It spilled out of her in little biting snippets spoken through lightly clenched, smiling teeth.

  The others laughed. They thought she was just being funny. But after his first thoughtful look of surprise, Matthew, who was the target of her sarcastic witticisms, started to get angry as well, and soon they were snarling and snapping at each other’s heels like a pair of Yorkshire terriers.

  That pleased her mightily, and so did the tight, iron-hard set to his mouth when at last the evening ended, and they strolled back to his condominium.

  The heat of the day had finally dissipated, and a cool, brisk wind blew steadily off the lake. At first the chill breeze on her face was intoxicating, but then she shivered, and Matt, who had strode in dark menacing silence beside her, shrugged out of his suit jacket and held it out to her.

  She refused it.

  He snarled, taut and low and furious, “Take it.”

  “I don’t want it!” she snapped, in pain and delight.

  “I said take it!” He flung it at her violently, and it would have slid to the filthy pavement had she not clutched at the material in reflexive shock. Then, with a haughty shrug, she slung it around her shoulders and quickened her pace to join the others.

  Back inside, the group made goodnight noises and dispersed to the various rooms to prepare for bed. Sian trailed Matt’s jacket over the back of the couch without thanks and strode quickly for the haven of his study.

  She was not quick enough. He caught up with her in the hall, and snaked one powerful hand around her upper arm.

  She was jerked around to face him. She fumbled desperately for a sense of outrage at the manhandling, but instead only felt a kind of despair that glistened wetly in her hard, bright eyes. He stared at her for a long, breathless moment, then his own lowering fury seemed to disappear, leaving behind the aspect of a stern and tired man.

  “You can’t do it,” he said flatly.

  “Do what?”

  “You can’t make me angry enough to withdraw my invitation.” He bent his head down to her and whispered, a bare inch from her face, “I want you to come. Tough luck, you’ll just have to learn how to handle it. So stop acting like a silly bitch, all right?”

  Then he let go of her and strode back to the living-room. As she stared, he tilted back his head with a heavy sigh, yanked his tie loose, and began to shrug out of his shirt as he disappeared from sight.

  She made an inarticulate, strangled sound. Oh, God, oh, God. She wanted to run to him now, throw her arms around his waist and ask for forgiveness. She knew just how silken the texture of his bare chest would be.

  Instead she bolted like a rabbit for the study, shut the door behind her and leaned back, then pounded her fist against it in frustration. She had the feeling it was going to be a long and sleepless night.

  Chapter Eight

  Surprisingly enough, however, when she had t
aken her turn at the bathroom off Matt’s bedroom to wash and brush her teeth, then gone back to the study to don her long nightshirt and slip between the covers on the soft, cushiony airbed, she tumbled straight into a deep, heavy sleep.

  She half surfaced to a fleeting awareness occasionally because of the unfamiliarity of her bed and surroundings, and once, very early in the morning, when the early sunrise lightened the study in spite of the closed curtains. She blinked up at the French print that hung over her head, then her eyes closed again and she dreamed of Paris in the springtime.

  She was strolling along the wide promenade by the bank of the Seine river when it started to rain, soft and warm against her upturned cheeks. A group of smiling Japanese tourists offered her an umbrella, but she shook her head. She liked the gentle rain; it soothed and caressed her skin with long, sensitive fingers and whispered the satiny words, Wake up, darling. Won’t you wake up?

  She sighed and turned on to her side, and opened her eyes as she came off the airbed and lay like a burrowing animal underneath the untidy shelter of her covers.

  Matt knelt over her, cupping her face with his hands. Her sleepy, bemused gaze travelled all over him. He was shirtless and shoeless, clad only in a pair of faded jeans, and he smelled soapy clean, warmly male, his damp, tawny hair combed back from a freshly shaved face.

  “Wake up, darling,” he whispered, stroking her softened lips with the ball of his thumb.

  “Hi,” she murmured, still half asleep and blissfully, luxuriously languid. Surprised by pleasure, without the memory of the need for defence or barriers or inhibiting insecurities, her lovely green eyes smiled up at him.

  Something shook over his face, a kind of wonderment, and with a sigh that sounded like surrender he bent down and kissed her vulnerable mouth. With an action that seemed as natural as breathing, she reached up to stroke her fingers through his cool, damp hair to the back of his head, while her heavy eyelids fluttered shut.

  He shifted under her caress, a sensuous movement of inarticulate delight, while his lips wandered, mobile and explorative, over the contours of hers. An indolent heat washed through her reclining body, which stretched and turned in instinctive response. His hands moved from her face to slide along the slender stalk of her neck, over the light cotton material of her nightshirt, down her exposed torso.

  To touch her was to know her: all the delicate beating hollows of sensitivity, the grace in her curved ribcage, the soft firm mounds of her breasts which tingled with a new and exciting fire as he brushed against them.

  She was drowning in a wellspring of sheer desire, wandering a vast uncharted territory where the shape and strength of his naked, muscled shoulders were both guide and anchor. Her mouth opened like an amazed flower; he groaned at the gift, and took it with breathless care, searching deep in the intimate crevices for further paths of subterranean delight, pushing her head back against the carpet.

  Her hands at his shoulders twisted and shook, and slipped with an intensified sensory shock down the tensile expanse of his powerful back, and collapsed his body into a downward arc that brought his full weight on to her.

  He was heavy, such a big, strong man, but she was so meltingly boneless that the contact only heightened the whirling pleasure, erecting through the thin T-shirt her nipples that were crushed against his chest, deepening the empty ache between her legs. His mouth quickened over hers, taut and slanted with fierce demand, drawing, calling upon her, building her desire to a heat that dampened the tendrils of hair at her temples and shook her breathing with unfulfilled stress.

  She moaned with soft incomprehension, for the empty ache was becoming an agony, and in instant passionate response he thrust one heavy knee between her legs, his entire length throbbing hard and aggressive, at breast and hip and the soft, innocent arc of her pelvis.

  The bedcovers were an infuriating barrier. She couldn’t stand it; rational thought in the heart of this mating was an impossibility. She twisted under him in urgent frustration, and the grip of his hand over her breast tightened painfully…and he arced back his head with a tortured gasp, breaking the melded contact with her mouth, and it was such a brutal withdrawal, so like the last time, that her face twisted in a harsh sob of protest.

  “God!” The exclamation tore out of him raggedly, and he trembled from head to toe. “Sian, my God, help me stop.”

  “I don’t want to.” The words dragged out of her, nearly incoherent, and he gripped her head with both hands.

  “Neither do I.” His whisper was a groan. “But not here, not now—with the others in the apartment—”

  Her eyes flared open, wild and brilliant with a harsh return to sanity, and she groaned deeply, “Oh, no.”

  “Darling, I’m so sorry,” he breathed, and stroked the tight, distressed line of her cheek. “I didn’t mean for it to happen like this, to get so out of hand—”

  It was such torment, to feel and see and want him so badly that it brought tears to her eyes, and her face clenched as she turned away sharply from him and gritted, “Get out.”

  “I can’t,” said Matthew harshly. “Not until I know you’re all right.”

  “Yes, yes, I am, just please—go away and give me a few minutes to pull myself together!” Her voice broke on the last word, and for a suspended instant she felt his thoughts as surely as she felt his thudding heartbeat against hers: his wordless, almost uncontrollable desire to give her comfort which would be the last, fatal straw, for she could not deny it, no more than she could deny him anything else he wished for in that moment.

  Then he pulled away from her, in a silence that screamed reluctance, and said quietly, tightly, “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

  Go. Go. She wrapped her arms around herself, huddling underneath her covers until the door shut behind him. Then she groaned, a long, animal sound, and shivered as though she had a high fever.

  The aftermath of such a fierce, unconsummated desire was something she didn’t know how to cope with. She didn’t have the tools; her only knowledge of sex was that of a textbook kind. She knew all about the facts of sexual frustration and fulfilment, but she had never experienced them for herself, and her body was an untapped vessel.

  She had never before considered herself to be a prude. She had kissed, and indulged in some petting with a few of her dates, but it had always been a light, mild sort of pleasure that did not stir the heart and mind to uncontrollable recklessness. In consequence, she had found it almost too ridiculously easy to refrain from going to bed with anyone, and had gradually come to assume that she would wait until she could give her virginity to her husband. It had seemed, in the cold-blooded light of day, to be one more asset she could bring to a marriage, especially in today’s society when the indulgence of casual sex carried its own dangers.

  But Matthew called upon something ingrained and atavistic in her. Effortlessly they seemed to strike right at the heart of each other’s archetypal instinct.

  Him. Making her crazy, infuriating her, pushing her, pursuing her, driving her where he wanted her to go. Sian’s tousled head turned restlessly on her pillow. She was tired of running, tired of denying, tired of reasons and fears. She was tired of being pushed too far without culmination. What to do about it? Pare to the essence in the hunt for resolution, damn the consequences, and shove him back.

  She smiled slowly, green eyes glowing, and for the first time since meeting Matthew, felt at peace.

  Decision was a wanton lady.

  After a time, she stirred herself to prosaic action, tidied and made her bed, searched through her luggage for the small cloth bag that held her cleansing cream and toothbrush. When she slipped down the hall to the bathroom, it was empty, so she entered, locked the door behind her and stood for several minutes under a stinging, cool shower spray. It soothed her hot, flushed body and cleared her mind, and, after shampooing and soaping all over, she went back to the study and pulled on a
black vest top and a loose, comfortable pair of sky-blue Bermuda shorts.

  She’d had time to remember why Matt had come to wake her up, and went to the kitchen in search of him. The scent of fresh coffee filled the air as she rounded the corner.

  Matt had donned a white T-shirt and was busy at the butcher block counter, halving grapefruit. Though she had moved silently, his tawny head lifted and he turned to the doorway.

  His expression was very serious, the hazel eyes overshadowed in a way she had never seen before. They moved over her pale, carved face and steady gaze, and, with a slight shake of his head, he sighed and said, “Sian, I am sorry.”

  The deep self-accusation in his voice cut her to the quick, so she cut back, with verbal stiletto. “Ooh,” she cooed sweetly, “regrets so soon? That doesn’t augur well for any future visits, does it, darling?”

  His head reared back. He stared at her narrowly. “Are you all right?”

  She gave him a tight, sour smile and strolled into the room. “I won’t pretend that I’m not—disturbed.”

  He laid down his knife and took a step forward, and stopped dead when she jerked back in instant reaction. “Do you know,” he said then, sounding so very odd, “that I wouldn’t want to hurt you for anything?”

  “What’s the matter, Matthew,” she mocked, cocking her head to one side, “are you afraid I’ll break? Going to handle me with kid gloves? It’s a trifle late for that, don’t you think?”

  He averted his face sharply, nostrils flared, and admitted harshly, “I guess I deserved that.”

  Her eyes gleamed with the liqueur of excitement. Push him again. “Humility, no less,” she drawled, and he jerked towards the counter to hold on to the edge with both hands. “This is getting fun. If you lie on the floor, I can kick you some more.”