While the Fire Rages

by Joan Hohl

  “Yes, you can. And you will.” Brett’s tone indicated there’d be no arguing over the matter. “I was instructed to, and this is an exact quote, ‘Bring her with you.’“

  “By whom?” Although she was positive the answer would be Wolf, Jo asked anyway. Wolf was the only person who knew her family situation. Thus Brett’s answer came as a complete surprise.

  “By Madam President, herself.”

  “Your mother!”

  “The one and only,” Brett concurred softly.

  “But why?” Oh, God, had Wolf discussed her with his mother? And, in turn, had his mother taken pity on her? Jo felt sick… and more than a little angry. Damn it, she didn’t want or need pity!

  “Who knows what motivates the great minds?” Brett replied in a careless tone that was belied by the glitter of speculation in his eyes. It was patently obvious to Jo that something about his mother’s invitation had angered Brett too. The realization reinforced her decision not to go, and, shaking her head sharply, she told him so.

  “I won’t go with you.”

  Jo was totally unprepared for the swiftness of Brett’s reaction to her refusal to accompany him south. Rising abruptly to his feet, he gave a sharp tug on her wrist that impelled her against his hard chest. Releasing her wrist, he imprisoned her within his arms, crushing her soft breasts to the rock hardness of him.

  “You will go with me,” Brett contradicted with soft menace. “When I leave here on the twenty-third, and when I fly south on the twenty-fourth.” Releasing her as abruptly as he’d caught her to him, he said briskly, “Now, let’s get this mess cleaned up.” His lips curved into a wickedly alluring smile. “I want to go back to bed.”

  “You can go straight to hell!” Really angry now, Jo planted her balled fists onto her slim hips. Who the hell did he think he was talking to ... the upstairs maid? Was there an upstairs maid? Jo shrugged the irrelevant thought aside. Damn him! One night in bed and he acted as if he owned her! Well, Madam President’s fair-haired boy was about to learn that Jo Lawrence would not be owned ... by anyone! She might love him but she’d be damned if she’d pander to him! She had learned the folly of pandering to a man the hard way. Never, never again, she vowed. “If you’re feeling the need to work off the enormous breakfast you consumed,” Jo said scathingly, “go beat your feet on the beach again.” Her nastily voiced advice was followed by aloud gasp as she was immediately hauled into his arms.

  “Oh, but I’d much prefer working off my ‘enormous’ meal by beating my body against yours,” Brett purred with deliberate crudity. “Are you going to fight me?” One pale eyebrow arched elegantly. “Make me subdue you?” His lips twitched into a devilish smile. “How very intriguing.”

  “Let me go, Brett,” Jo gritted warningly. “You’ll get nothing from me by force.”Jo groaned silently. If he didn’t release her at once she’d be a goner! Already the melting process had begun, and she could feel the effects in the lower part of her body. Oh, God! Maybe the transition from female to woman had not been so wonderful after all. She was vulnerable to him now, much too vulnerable.

  “Force!” Brett exclaimed on a soft burst of laughter. “Oh, honey, there’ll be no need for me to use force.” His liquid silver gaze seared her face. “Whether you realize it or not, your eyes are soft with desire. Your lips are parted, ready for mine. And”—his hands slid down her back to cup her derriere—”your hips are moving against mine very invitingly.” Slowly, inexorably, he drew her against the hardness of his thighs and aroused manhood. “I accept your invitation,” he murmured lowering his head. ‘Just as you are going to accept my mother’s.”

  Jo wanted to scream a denial, and she would have if Brett’s mouth had not taken hers so sweetly. Damn him, she sighed, mingling her breath with his. Damn him for being the only man able to ignite her physical fire! Fully cognizant of what she was doing, hating and loving it at one and the same time, Jo coiled her arms around Brett’s strong neck and gave herself up to the moment

  The moment stretched into most of the afternoon! By the time Brett allowed Jo to drift into sleep, she was completely fulfilled and thoroughly exhausted. This man, she thought groggily, swiftly losing her hold on consciousness, has more than enough stamina to accommodate two women! Jo should have been upset by the observation, and she would have been if she had not drifted so far along the path to slumber.

  The third time Jo woke it was to an oddly familiar stillness that was in no way connected to the fact that she was alone in the bed. Frowning as her mind groped for an explanation, Jo stared at the darkened bedroom window. A faint splat against the pane brought instant recognition. It was snowing!

  Snow. Jo’s pulses leaped with a ray of hope. If it were to snow long enough and hard enough, maybe she and Brett would be stranded through Christmas! Savoring the possibility for more reasons than she cared to examine too closely, Jo snuggled deeper under the covers. She really should get up, she supposed vaguely. But then, she yawned, why should she? She was here to rest, wasn’t she? And she certainly hadn’t had a great amount of rest since Brett’s arrival. The man was a sexual dynamo!

  Groaning aloud, Jo rolled onto her side. Oh, damn! Jo was reminded of the last observation she’d made about him before falling asleep. Damn! Damn! Damn! Why had she gone to Vermont? Why had she gone home for Thanksgiving? Why had she ever been born? She didn’t want to think about Vermont. She didn’t want to think about Thanksgiving. She didn’t want to think, period. The room was too quiet. Quiet was conducive to contemplation. Sighing in defeat, Jo flopped onto her back and let memory have its way.

  * * * *

  On arriving in Brookhaven, the small southeastern Pennsylvania town Jo had grown up in, she had been greeted warmly, if separately, by her parents. The evening before Thanksgiving had gone rather smoothly, Jo thought. But then, of course, there were church services to attend and a united false front to maintain for the benefit of her parents’ fellow church members. Thanksgiving morning had not been too bad either, as her father had gone fishing, which put her mother into a good mood. That is, except for the note Jo’s father had left on the kitchen table for her.

  Her eyes beginning to sting, Jo lowered her lids and bit on her lip. If she lived forever she would never forget that note! How very like her father it had been, and all over an early phone call from Marybeth, a friend of Jo’s from their high school days.

  He’d written:

  My dear successful and independent daughter,

  Marybeth will call you about nine thirty. She called earlier (would you believe seven thirty?) but I told her that, like most normal people on a holiday, you were still in bed. As you were still asleep, you could not answer the phone. Inasmuch as you could not answer the phone, Marybeth could not talk to you. I told her to call again somewhere in the neighborhood of nine thirty, because I doubted you’d be up much before then. If you were to sleep till ten, and Marybeth calls at nine thirty, she still would not be able to speak to you. Anyway, if the phone rings at nine thirty, and you are awake to hear it, it will probably be Marybeth. Happy Thanksgiving, darling,

  Daddy

  At first Jo had laughed at the note, another in a long line of similar, whimsical missives. And then she had cried, because he was so dear and trying so hard to appear lighthearted in the face of his unhappiness. As fate would have it, her mother had entered the kitchen as Jo was wiping the tears from her cheeks. In response to her mother’s concern over her tears, Jo had silently handed her the note. After skimming the lines, her mother had smiled bitterly.

  “All men can be charming when it suits their purposes,” Ellen Lawrence said dryly.

  “Oh, Mom.” Jo sighed, beginning to feel the familiar tightness in her stomach that usually appeared on her visits home. “Why do you always use that tone of voice when talking about Daddy?”

  “Because he’s a man,” Ellen retorted. “I would have thought your experience with Gary Devlin would have taught you that they’re all the same. They want one thing from
a woman, then, once they get what they want, they no longer want her.”

  Jo remained perfectly still in hopes that her mother would expound on her subject. To date, this outburst was the closest Ellen had come to explaining the problem between herself and her husband, Mark.

  “You’d do better to concentrate on your career,” Ellen went on. “And forget the myth about finding happiness with a man. That kind of happiness exists only in fairy tales.”

  Jo knew from her mother’s flat tone that the subject was now closed, and she had learned nothing of why she had always felt that she was hovering in the demarcation zone between opposing forces.

  As usual, when Jo returned to New York the day after Thanksgiving, she felt depressed and vaguely responsible for the failure of her parents’ marriage. Intellectually Jo knew she was in no way at fault, just as she knew, intellectually, she was not a cold, unresponsive woman like her mother. Lord, hadn’t she lain awake night after night aching for the touch of one particular man? Somehow knowing something intellectually did not erase the scars carried over from childhood.

  Jo sniffed in the silence of the bedroom. Then, as if her visit home hadn’t been depressing enough, she had received that call from Casey Delheny! Why the hell hadn’t she followed her first impulse and sent her assistant up to Vermont? Because she’d been hoping for a mental diversion, Jo derided herself. What she had found had had more the effect of a blow to the solar plexus. Oh, the technical problem regarding the application of one of Casey’s designer’s ideas to the existing plumbing plans had been relatively easy to unwrinkle. Relating to what Casey had confided to her over one too many drinks the night before Jo was due to return to New York was infinitely more difficult to handle.

  “Are Brett and Marsha still together?” Casey had asked Jo morosely, swallowing almost half of her third martini.

  “Together?”Jo had prompted softly, telling herself Casey, unhappy because of her lengthy separation from Sean, who was still in the Poconos, was talking through a gin-and-vermouth haze.

  “Yes, you know, like in bed. That kind of together.” Raising her glass, Casey gulped down the remainder of her drink. “The kind of together Sean and I have been doing damn little of lately.” Waving her glass in the air, Casey indicated to their waiter that she wanted another drink. Tilting her head, she ran an assessing glance over Jo. “You know, I do believe Brett’s even more of a live wire than Wolf is.” She laughed insinuatingly. “Business-wise and otherwise. I swear, he and Marsha spent every night together locked inside his room. Yet he was hard at work bright and early every morning.”

  Jo had returned to New York more depressed than before, even though she had suspected an affair between Brett and Marsha since he’d called her and as much as ordered her to find an apartment for Marsha. Walking into her office the morning she returned to find that insultingly terse note ordering her to “get in here” had been the absolute last straw for Jo. Suddenly bone weary, she had gone to Brett’s office in a cold rage, prepared to resign if he refused her request for a leave of absence. She had to get away, to think and to rest.

  Circles, circles, circles. Would this mental merry-go-round never end? Jo sighed. Lord, she was tired of her own thoughts! How many times must she plow over the same row before she found ground fertile enough to sprout some answers? Were there any answers? Jo moved restlessly between the tangled sheets, enjoying the sensuous feel of the fine cotton against her naked skin. A smile of physical contentment softened the taut line of her mouth. Brett had given her the answer to one question, perhaps the most important one. Her initial response to him had been an outright revelation! Always before, with Gary, she had gone positively rigid the moment he began to enter. But then the moment of penetration had always come mere minutes after he had drawn her to him. Now, after experiencing Brett’s lovemaking and the infinite care he took to arouse her body to the point of readiness that equaled his own, Jo realized that Gary had only been interested in self-gratification, not mutual satisfaction. In the expertise stakes, one might say that Brett crossed the wire before Gary ever left the gate.

  The rather silly analogy amused Jo. Pushing back the covers with one hand, Jo lifted her other hand to smother a giggle. Jumping off the bed, she shook her head in amazement; she never giggled! Giggling was strictly for teenage girls, usually in connection with teenage boys! Telling herself her gray matter was beginning to flake, Jo grabbed up her robe and strolled to the bathroom.

  Standing under the stinging-hot shower spray, Jo came to terms with what she had already decided subconsciously. She would accept whatever Brett offered her of himself for as long as he offered it.

  Turning around, she dropped her head to allow the hot spray to massage the tension out of the muscles in the back of her neck. Her decision was probably not a very intelligent one, Jo mused, sighing blissfully as the jet fingers reduced her muscles to rubber. I want him, she argued in her own defense, even if I have to share him. An image of Marsha Wenger rose to torment Jo’s mind, and she gritted her teeth in determination. Bump Marsha Wenger! Brett’s here now, with me, and I’ll hang on to him for all I’m worth, even if it means going to Florida with him. And while I’m there, I just might have a word with that blabbermouth Wolfgang Renninger!

  Applying the same sharp intellect that had earned her the position of assistant to Wolf, Jo ruthlessly refused to use the old feminine cop-out of not being able to live without Brett. She could survive very well, if not too comfortably, without him and she knew it. Then again, why should she? At this moment in her life she was deeply in love, and she was Brett’s, mind, body, and soul. When her time with him was over, she would accept the hand dealt to her without a wince. What the hell! Jo shrugged, oddly cold within the cascading hot water. She didn’t want commitment either. Did she? Of course not, she assured herself bracingly. Jo was so consumed with her own rationalizing, she didn’t hear the door being opened or feel a draft when the shower curtain was inched aside,

  “Have you taken to sleeping in the shower now too, water baby?”

  With a gasp that grew into a gurgle, due to water in the mouth, Jo flung her head back to glare at Brett. “Are you trying to drown me?” she sputtered indignantly.

  “I don’t have to,” Brett drawled dryly, unmindful of his shirt as he reached in to turn the water off. “You’re doing a pretty good job of it yourself.” Curling a now soaking wet arm around Jo’s waist, he lifted her off her feet. “Out, water baby, before you wash yourself down the drain.”

  “Brett!” Jo protested his handling of her, although she didn’t struggle. Only a complete idiot would take the chance of slipping out of one arm to land in a painful heap on the hard floor of a bathtub! “I was not falling asleep. I was letting the hot water work the ache out of my muscles!” Jo was so annoyed she was unaware of exactly what she was admitting to. As Brett set her carefully onto the fluffy bath mat, Jo shrugged off his arm. “And I wish you’d stop calling me that ridiculous name!”

  “But I like that ridiculous name.” Brett grinned. “I also like to look at you when you’re all wet and slippery.” The grin grew up to be a leer. “You are one sexy baby when you’re wet.” Bending to her, he licked a drop of water from the tip of her breast. “Hmmm ... nectar,” he murmured throatily, curling his tongue around the swiftly hardening bud before, very gently, closing his teeth on it. “And ambrosia.” He passed judgment on the taste of her.

  “You’re positively crazy!” Jo gasped, unconsciously arching her back to give him better access to his point of interest. “Oh, Brett... what are you doing?”Jo knew full well what he was doing; she could feel the results of his suckling lips through the nerve endings in her quickly heating core.

  “You don’t know?” Brett teased, skimming his tongue across her body from one breast tip to the other. “Maybe I’m not doing it right.” Before her startled eyes, he dropped to his knees. “I guess I need a lot more practice. But first, I think I’ll get rid of this sopping sweater.” Straightening, he whi
pped the garment up his body and over his head, tossing it aside carelessly. It landed in the bathtub with a soft plop that neither he nor Jo heard. Then, his hands clasping her lightly around her rib cage, his eyes watching hers, Brett enclosed one nipple inside his mouth.

  It was the most incredibly erotic action Jo could imagine, Brett watching her, while she watched him make love to her body! Lightheaded, feeling her knees begin to buckle, Jo grasped Brett’s shoulders to keep from falling, a purring moan tickling the back of her throat.

  “Ah ... perhaps I am doing it right.” He laughed softly. Slowly, tantalizingly, he lavished attention on her midsection, stringing moist kisses down to her navel. When he dipped the tip of his tongue into the indentation, Jo shuddered and gasped his name aloud. “You’re trembling,” he breathed against the damp skin stretched tautly over her abdomen. “From the cold outside, I wonder, or the heat inside?”

  Quickly losing touch with reality, Jo sagged against him and, at the feel of his tongue dancing around the edge of her delta triangle she lost all control of her legs and sank to the floor before him. It was a short, fast trip from her knees to her back. The soft fibers of the bath mat caressed Jo’s spine while the prickly hair on Brett’s chest caressed her breasts.

  With her feet flat on the floor, and her knees bent and angled out, Jo should have been uncomfortable. She wasn’t. Even the chafing sensation of Brett’s jean-clad thighs against the inside of her own was more exciting than abrading. The realization of his arousal as he arched his body into hers was more exciting still. Brett’s hands captured Jo’s breasts as his mouth captured her lips. The assault on her senses was total. Spearing her tongue into his mouth, Jo dug her nails into his shoulders, glorying in the grunt of pleasure that exploded from his throat as he thrust his hips in reaction.

  “I’ve got to get out of these damn jeans.” He groaned, heaving himself up and away from her with obvious reluctance. “Stay warm for me, babe,” he pleaded hoarsely, his hands fumbling with the belt buckle.