“Jesus!” As her fingers closed on him he groaned, then groaned again. Suddenly he was rolling with her, flipping her onto her back with such urgency that she lost her bearings and had to cling to his shoulders as the only solid things in a shifting world. They were tangled, momentarily, in the quilt. With a muttered oath, he jerked free of it, casting it aside. Then he was on top of her, his body hard and heavy, his breathing coming in fast, ragged pants. His mouth fastened on hers with a greedy passion that stoked an answering fire in her. Summer kissed him back hotly, wanting his lovemaking with a fierceness that she would never, before this day, before Steve, have believed herself capable of feeling.
With the tiny part of her brain that was still functional, she realized he was what she had been seeking for years. A man who needed her; a man to love: Steve.
His hands were unsteady as he undressed her, and Summer had to help him. Unable to get the sweatshirt zipper all the way down, he gave up and jerked the garment over her head. Summer was still wearing her T-shirt and bra, and, impatient, he merely tugged those out of his way, leaving them twisted beneath her armpits. As his fingers found her breasts, closing over the soft mounds in a grip that should have hurt but didn’t, she moaned and forgot all about trying to help him work the fastenings on her clothes. He kissed her breasts, and she thought she would die with the sheer exquisite pleasure of it. Then suddenly, abruptly, his hands and mouth were removed. She opened her eyes to discover that he had left her to tug off his shorts, his shirt, his shoes. Hands shaking, she sat up to help him, running her mouth greedily over his body as they both pulled at his clothes.
When he was done, it was her turn. He yanked her T-shirt and her bra over her head without bothering to unfasten the latter. His hands found her breasts, and he bent his head to kiss her, but she eluded him.
She had different prey in mind.
With her hands on his shoulders she pressed him down on the smooth, slick carpet of fallen leaves, kissing his neck, running her mouth over the warm, hair-roughened skin of his chest, nibbling at his tightening abdomen, on the way to her prize.
When she found him with her mouth, he groaned. He was huge and hot and hard as she kissed him, licked him, swallowed him whole. His muscles clenched, his eyes closed, and for a moment, as she took him higher and higher, she reveled in her power. He was hers, all hers, and she was claiming him.
Then his hands tangled in her hair, pulling her away from him, pulling her up. He turned with her, flipping her onto her back and yanking down her shorts and panties with a quick series of near-frenzied movements. Her shorts and panties were about her ankles, and she still wore her shoes, but he couldn’t wait to strip her properly. With a groan he came down on top of her again. Her knees parted of their own volition and her arms wrapped around his neck as she welcomed him. He thrust home with hard urgency, and Summer gasped. His answering growl enflamed her. She rose and fell with her own urgent need as he moved in, then out, then in again in a relentless, driving rhythm. Her head was thrown back, her mouth wide open as he took her, and she took him, too. Her nails dug deep into his muscled back; her thighs squeezed his hips. She was mindless with pleasure, delirious with it, trembling with it. There was no room in her head for anything except the wonder of her own need—and the knowledge that this was Steve.
His hands closed over her buttocks, lifting her so that he could thrust more deeply inside her, and with a harsh groan his mouth clamped over the tender nipple of her left breast.
Summer could stand no more. Pleasure more intense than anything she had ever imagined burst gloriously inside her.
“Oh, Steve! Steve! Steve!”
She shuddered and clung, crying out her joy into the endless dark. He responded with one final, savage thrust and his own harsh cry, shaking as he held himself inside her.
Then, with the suddenness of a passing storm, it was over.
Summer lay limply on the ground, conscious of a steadily increasing litany of discomfort. There was a hummock of grass between her shoulder blades. Her legs were freezing. The big lummox collapsed atop her weighed a ton.
And it was starting to rain.
33
“It’s raining.” Summer kissed his bristly cheek.
“Mmm?” Steve didn’t open his eyes, didn’t lift his head, didn’t smile at her, didn’t move.
“I said it’s raining.” A fat drop plopped on her nose to underline the point. She shoved at his shoulder. “We’re going to get soaked.”
His eyes opened then. The dangerous black depths glinted at her for a moment, and then he stirred, kissing her nose. “You’re beautiful,” he said.
“So are you,” she answered, smiling.
“I bet you say that to all the guys.” He fluttered his eyelashes at her in exaggerated flirtatiousness.
“Nope. Only the handsome ones.”
He laughed. “I’ve been called lots of things in my life, but never handsome.”
“Obviously you’ve been hanging out with the wrong kind of woman.”
“Obviously.”
Another drop splattered on Summer’s forehead. Suddenly Muffy was there beside her, whining, peering anxiously down into her face. Summer wasn’t sure, but she didn’t think Muffy had ever been out in the rain before.
“Damned voyeuristic mutt,” Steve muttered. “Bet she watched the whole thing.”
He rolled off Summer and sat up, knees bent, arms resting on his knees as he cast what appeared to be a wary look around, seemingly paying particular attention to the lower branches of nearby trees. For what? Summer wondered, and then she figured it out.
The fire hissed and sizzled as another few raindrops hit.
“Looking for Deedee?” Summer asked sweetly, sitting up and restoring her shorts and panties to their proper position. Steve glanced at her, narrowed his eyes, pursed his lips, and finally nodded.
“I think she’s haunting me.”
Summer couldn’t help it. Despite the half-joshing tone of his voice, she saw red. She hadn’t won the battle to lose the war!
She grabbed a pine cone from the ground and heaved it at him. It caught him on the chin.
“Hey!” he said, rubbing his chin and looking surprised. “What was that for?”
Summer threw another one. It hit its target too. Then she scrambled to her feet and loomed over him, catching him by both ears and dragging his head around, glaring down into his upturned face with her nose no more than six inches from his.
“I don’t want to hear another word about Deedee! Not so much as another syllable, understand?”
For a moment he looked almost alarmed. Then he grinned, reached up, grabbed her around her waist, and pulled her down onto his lap.
“I like my women jealous,” he said, and kissed her. His hands found and fondled her bare breasts. He was naked and she was half so and his kiss was setting her afire.…
A shower of raindrops broke them apart.
“It’s going to storm,” he said, lifting his head to the distant sound of thunder. “We’ve got to find some kind of shelter.”
“What do you suggest?” She knew as well as he did that there was no shelter around for miles.
“Pack everything up but the quilt. I’ve got an idea.”
Summer got dressed, then did as he told her while he pulled on his cutoffs and shoes and vanished into the trees. In the distance lightning flickered briefly across the sky. The wind blew more raindrops across the clearing. Their fire sizzled and danced. It was going to pour at any minute.
“Come on.” Steve reappeared, kicked out the fire, grabbed the gym bag and Muffy, and headed back into the trees. Somehow Summer didn’t think a forest was the best place to be during a thunderstorm, but, hugging the quilt to her bosom, she followed.
She would follow those broad shoulders to hell and back.
Beneath a sheltering grove of what, from the smell of them, seemed to be cedars, he had thrown together a crude shelter consisting of one picnic table turned upside down a
top another one—this, Summer presumed, was to make doubly sure the rain didn’t drip through the cracks in the top—with pine branches leaning against the sides.
“Give me the quilt.”
She passed it to him, and he crawled beneath the picnic table to spread the quilt on the ground. Raindrops began to fall in earnest. Summer joined him in a hurry. When they were settled, they lay spoon fashion, cocooned in the quilt, with Summer’s T-shirted back snuggled against Steve’s bare chest, and his arms around her waist. Their heads rested on the gym bag. Their shoes, and Summer’s socks, sat side by side near one jury-rigged wall.
Thunder rolled ominously. Rain began to fall in a steady stream. Muffy whined and looked with piteous entreaty at Summer. Summer pulled the little dog against her chest and wrapped the quilt around her, too.
The three of them were unexpectedly cozy in their makeshift shelter with the rain coming down all around but not touching them. The air was cool, and damp, and smelled of rain and leaves. The patter of raindrops hitting the top of their shelter was soothing. With Steve’s arms around her, Summer was warm and dry, and, despite the circumstances, felt curiously content.
“Tell me about your dentist friend.” Steve’s voice was a low rumble in her ear. Summer slanted a glance back over her shoulder at him, smiling to herself.
“He’s a very good dentist,” she said demurely.
“Do you sleep with him?”
“That,” Summer said, wriggling around so that she was facing him and then tweaking his nose, “is none of your business.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You planning to see him again?”
“You mean if we survive this?”
“That’s what I mean.”
Summer eyed him. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” His black eyes narrowed.
“Depends on if I have a reason not to see him again.”
“Like what kind of reason?”
“I don’t know—like maybe if there was somebody new in my life.”
“Is there?”
“Mmm.”
“That’s no answer.”
“It’s the best you’re going to get.”
“Oh, yeah?” He kissed her mouth, his lips warm and leisurely and entirely proprietary. “Know what? I think there’s somebody new in your life.”
“I thought you didn’t want to get involved.”
He smiled lazily at her. The effect of that smile at such close quarters was devastating. “I don’t. But like you said, I think it’s already too late.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re involved?”
“Looks like it, doesn’t it?”
“So what about Deedee?”
Steve sighed, and rolled onto his back, bringing with him Summer, the quilt, and Muffy, who was tangled up in it. Muffy, indignant at being treated with so little consideration, wriggled out the end of the cocoon to hunch indignantly just inside the shelter. Neither human paid the least attention to her.
“Baby, I think you’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick where Deedee’s concerned. We never had the kind of love affair that you seem to think we did. What was between us was never meant to be a forever kind of thing. She and I both knew that all along. All right, so I keep thinking that I see her. I can’t help it. Damn it, I know she’s dead, and I don’t believe in ghosts. So you want to hear the only explanation I can come up with?”
“What’s that?” Summer, lying sprawled atop him securely swathed in quilt, lifted her head, folding her hands on his chest and propping her chin on them as she looked down into his face.
“I never saw her before I met you. Not once, in the three years since she died. I think I’m seeing her now because of guilt over the way I feel when I’m with you.”
“Really?” Summer looked down at him hopefully.
“Really.”
“So how do you feel when you’re with me?”
Steve grinned. “Horny.”
Summer pinched his chest. He yelped, rubbing the injured spot.
“Is that all?” She glared at him.
“Hey, it works for me.”
Summer pursed her lips and rolled off him, crossing her arms over her chest and presenting her back to him with a flounce.
“What more do you want?” he protested, leaning up on one elbow to peer down into her averted face.
“From you?” Summer laughed. “Not a thing.”
“Now you’re mad at me.” He dropped a kiss on her ear. She elbowed him sharply in the chest. He grunted, cringing, and then leaned over her again.
“I suppose you want me to tell you that I think we’ve got something special going here. That with you and me, maybe it is a forever kind of thing. Is that it?”
“I don’t want you to tell me anything. I don’t even want you to speak to me. I—”
“Well,” he interrupted, his breath warm as he spoke into her ear. “That’s just what I think.”
It took a moment for that to sink in.
“What?” She turned over so that she could see his face. He smiled at her, rather ruefully, she thought.
“You heard me,” he said.
“Repeat that.”
“Not on your life.”
“Steve Calhoun, are you trying to say that you’ve fallen in love with me?”
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
At the indignation clear in her face and voice, he backtracked hastily. “All right, I know. I think.”
“You think?” This time it wasn’t indignation she felt. It was outrage, pure and simple.
“Jesus, Summer, what do you want?”
“I want you to tell me, straight out, that you’ve fallen in love with me, if that’s what you’re trying to say.”
He stared at her without speaking for a moment. They were facing each other, lying on their sides swathed in the quilt, their heads inches apart on the blue nylon gym bag. Summer, rigid with temper, had both arms crossed firmly over her chest. Steve reached down, grasped both her hands with his, and pulled them, not without some token resistance on her part, free. Then he carried them to his mouth, and pressed a kiss against the knuckles of both hands.
“I think that maybe, just maybe, you were sent to rescue me from outer darkness,” he said quietly. “When I first encountered you, in that funeral home, I didn’t really care if I lived or died. Now I do.”
“Steve,” she whispered, touched to the heart by his words, and the infinite tenderness in his black eyes.
“Hush,” he said. “Let me finish, now that you’ve got me started. For years, I haven’t been able to look into the future with any kind of hope or joy. Now, when I think of a future—of being with you in my future—I feel both. Does that mean I’ve fallen in love with you? Who knows? But I’m willing to give it a shot—if you are.”
“Oh, Steve.” Looking searchingly into his eyes, Summer realized how sincerely he meant what he said. Her heart swelled. They were two people, damaged by life, who had somehow found in each other what they needed to heal their wounds. And that was a miracle. There was no other word for it. Summer snuggled closer, freeing her hands to stroke his bristly cheeks, trace the hard line of his mouth, tenderly touch the healing bruises. “If you can’t come right out and say it, I can: I’m in love with you.”
“Yeah?” He gave her a curious, lopsided little smile.
“Yeah,” she answered softly, and kissed his mouth.
Peering in through the makeshift shelter’s entrance, a not-quite-ready-for-prime-time angel gave a rousing cheer.
Which neither of the two principals to the conversation heard. Though Muffy did, and cocked her head in wonderment.
34
That night, the heavens celebrated. Thunder roared approval. Lightning cracked in laudatory bursts across the sky. Rain pelted down in never-ending applause. Summer and Steve, wrapped up in the quilt and each other, heard none of it.
She told him the truth of what it had been like to be married to Lem, about the bulimia she had developed as a result, about how hard it had been to heal herself and become whole again.
He told her about how he’d been drinking too much for years, about how, when his life had exploded in his face, he’d gone off the deep end and lit out on the bender to end all benders: a lost weekend that had lasted for nearly three years.
She told him that Lem had left her to marry his twenty-two-year-old nurse.
He told her that grief over the mess he’d gotten himself into had caused his father’s death.
And they held each other, and cried, and laughed, and made love—and healed.
“So what made you decide to come back?” Summer asked sleepily several hours later, as the tale of Steve’s wanderings over the last three years came to a close.
He was lying on his back and her head was cradled on his shoulder. The ground was hard. The air was cold. Pine needles prickled through the quilt in places to jab her most sensitive parts. Summer didn’t care. Naked, swathed in the quilt and warmed by the blast-furnace heat of Steve’s body, she felt blissfully, foolishly happy. Beneath the palm she had pressed to Steve’s hair-roughened chest, she could feel the steady beat of his heart.
“To Tennessee, you mean?” One hard-muscled arm was tucked beneath his head and the other was wrapped around Summer’s shoulders. As he spoke, his gaze was fixed on the raw planks of their makeshift ceiling. Summer immediately thought of him imagining Deedee lurking around up there somewhere, but dismissed the suspicion as unworthy. She had a gut feeling that Steve wouldn’t be seeing Deedee anymore. At least, she added to herself fiercely, not if he knew what was good for him!
“Well, as I told you, I was out in Nevada. My credit cards and my savings had taken me a long way, but by this time I was about broke. I woke up one afternoon in a whorehouse—Mabel’s, where the motto is The customer always comes first. There was a girl beside me, and we were both naked—ow, don’t punch me!—but I couldn’t remember how I got there, or a single thing we’d done. She was a hell of a good-looking girl, too.”
Walking After Midnight Page 25
