She had not been able to bear the humiliation. The day after the affair ended, she’d gone to her school principal and asked for a transfer. He’d agreed to arrange it at once. “I wish you’d come to me months ago,” he’d said sadly.
And now there was Morgan, not married by all accounts, but just as much of a threat in his way. What about all the things she didn’t know about him, things she sensed but which he would not divulge?
But what about the things you do know? her foolish heart cried. Don’t they count? He’s decent and kind and responsible. He took you in, gave you a place to stay, made you feel at home. And he’s brought you back to life, in places no one else can see. You’ve learned to feel again since he came into your life, to want. To ache, deep inside, to melt.
Helpless to deny any of it, she flicked her gaze back to his and read the same charged awareness in his eyes.
“Jessica?”
Compellingly quiet, his voice rolled over her, like vintage port, deep and dark. Like smoky autumn days and rich auburn sunsets. Like love....
Love? her scandalized brain scoffed. Be sensible, for pity’s sake. What can love possibly have to do with this?
Perhaps nothing, but the magnetism or whatever it was drummed a swift percussion in her blood, leaving her surely a little insane. Because what she actually did was lean into him and put her arms around his waist so that not a breath of the clear, cold air could come between them, and say, “I think we should stop worrying about tomorrow and concentrate on how we feel tonight.”
His breath caught in his throat. “You’re sure?”
She nodded. That was all but it was enough.
Dipping his head, he fastened his lips to hers to seal the contract and let them remain there as his feet retraced a path to the shore. Her body moved smoothly with his, the uncertainty gone, the outcome assured.
His lips tasted of cold and snow and frosty starlight. Of passion barely leashed, of scorching hunger and fiery need. Out there on the ice, with the rest of the world paralyzed in winter’s iron grip, what had begun as a candle’s flicker of attraction burst into flames and all that mattered was that the waiting was over. Right or wrong, wise or not, she and Morgan had made a choice and there was no going back.
Finally, he wrestled his mouth away from hers and took her by the arm. Urgently, silently, he steered her along the path under the trees, back toward the house. Once he stopped and, pressing her up against the trunk of a cedar, took her face in his gloved hands and kissed her again, as though to reaffirm their decision, to stoke the fire test it die before they had the chance to warm themselves at its flame.
His tongue spoke impassioned volumes, echoing the urgent thrust of his body against hers. Weak at the knees and utterly breathless, she thought for a moment that they’d never make it back to the house, that he’d take her out there in the shadows, with the snow for a mattress and the stars for a cover.
He didn’t. He released her, grasped her arm again and, in a voice rough with passion, muttered, “For Pete’s sake, let’s get back to the house before I lose what little sanity I have left.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE magic held, speeding them back across the frozen snow, fleet-footed and giddy with hunger for each other. Once inside the house, Morgan shucked off his boots, helped Jessica get rid of hers, peeled her free of the heavy down jacket and flung it with his across the newel post.
“You’ve got cold hands,” he said, chafing them between his.
And I’m getting cold feet, she thought miserably, the practicalities of what they were about to enter into filling her with misgivings.
He’d probably want to strip her naked. He’d see how plain she was then, how straight up and down except for her unremarkable little breasts. Men liked breasts on a woman—lush, ripe, big breasts. Men liked fire in a woman—unbridled passion and a sense of adventure.
Whatever had made her think she could please him?
He dropped a kiss on her mouth and, winding an arm around her waist, led her upstairs. She allowed him to because she couldn’t resist. His touch, his kiss, the heated glances he sent her way brought out a lust in her she’d never suspected.
Lust? Her romantic heart rebelled. Lust wasn’t what this was all about!
What else would you like to call it, dear? the eminently down-to-earth Miss Simms, the headmistress, inquired loftily.
Still she could not free herself of his spell. Blushing, she allowed him to draw her over the threshold to his room. She’d never been inside before. Even during the day the door had always been closed and, curious though she’d been, she hadn’t seen it as her right to snoop. He kicked it closed behind them now and flicked on a reading lamp that filled the shadows with too much light.
Like the room itself, his bed, she saw at once, was huge—a marriage bed, plenty big enough for two. And nothing between them and it except a few yards of carpet. She averted her eyes and wished he hadn’t turned on the lamp.
Apart from a tall armoire, a set of drawers and two bedside tables, the rest of the room was bare. Short of climbing into the wardrobe, there was no place to which a person might retire to undress discreetly. And she had so many layers of clothes to shed, not the least of which was the long red underwear.
A wave of color swept over her face at the thought of him seeing her in that!
“Jessica,” he said, linking his fingers through hers and watching her closely, “are you having second thoughts?”
Of course she was! She had absolutely no business contemplating making love with a man she’d known less than a week and, if she were honest, she’d come straight out and tell him she was afraid. But the plainer truth was that, despite the eleventh-hour attack of nerves, her body and soul cried out for him with a fine disregard for moral convention, and she was damned if she was going to turn away from him just because old fears had risen up to haunt her.
“You are very sweet,” Stuart had told her, that day he’d shut the door on their affair, “but not exactly a challenge any more, my dear, if you know what I mean.”
She’d known only too well. For him, the thrill had been in the chase, in being the first to seduce her. Once he’d accomplished that, he was ready to go on to other conquests.
Well, she had no virginity to lose now, no illusions to shatter. All she had—might ever have—was this moment and Morgan, and the miracle of his wanting her with the same urgency that she craved him. It showed in the molten glow of his eyes, in his clenched jaw, in the tension that held him immobile as he waited for her reply.
“I’m not having second thoughts,” she assured him. “I—”
“Because if you are,” he went on, “we can stop right now. I won’t think badly of you for changing your mind, but—”
“This is what I want,” she insisted quickly, before fear that she might disappoint him had her running for the hills.
He laid a finger across her lips. “But I will think very badly of myself if, tomorrow, you decide you’ve made a horrible mistake.”
Out there on the frozen lake she had felt free and strong enough to let her secret self emerge, enough to dare let the romantic in her run free, even if it was only for tonight. She wasn’t stupid; she knew her real life was drawn along different, more realistic lines, but just for this one special night she’d come to believe in miracles.
He had made that possible with his kisses and the way he’d looked at her. And now, with his probing questions, he was threatening to take it away. He was resurrecting the headmistress who never acted without due consideration, who never gave in to wild impulses. She didn’t want to be that woman. Not here, not now.
“You’re trying to talk me out of it, aren’t you?” she cried, flinching a little. “Why? Because you’ve changed your mind?”
He slid his hands around her neck, lacing his fingers at her nape and stroking his thumbs along her cheekbones. “No,” he said hoarsely. “Right or wrong, I’ve wanted you practically from the moment I first laid eyes
on you. But I’m not sure you....”
“What?” she said, tilting her head so that his hand was captured between her jaw and her shoulder. “What?”
He hesitated, his gaze scouring her face. “I’m wondering how much...if this is the first—”
Sweet heaven, he was afraid he was going to rob her of her innocence and that she’d expect him to compensate by making an honest woman of her! “You think I’m some naive, terrified virgin, don’t you? But I’m not—a virgin, I mean. I had an affair once....” She drew a sharp, defiant breath. “With a married man.”
But he continued to study her with cool dispassion and saw that she’d told only half the truth. “You didn’t know he was married at the time, though, did you?”
His insight punctured her bravado, leaving her feeling almost as big a fool as she had the day she’d found out Stuart had been toying with her all along. “No,” she whispered miserably. “If I had, I never would have gotten involved with him.”
“Well,” he murmured, drawing a tender fingertip down her throat with potent effect, “I’ve already told you I’m not married. That much, at least, I can promise you.”
It was, at best, a conditional vow but at least it was honest. And what else could he say? That he loved her? If he had, she wouldn’t have believed him. Rational people didn’t fall in love in a matter of days and if the realization tore at her heart a little it was because she’d been starving for romance for so long that it was difficult not to want the whole package.
“You don’t have to promise me anything,” she said. running her hands over the solid planes of his chest. “We haven’t known each other long enough to make those kinds of demands on each other. But even if I never see you again after I leave this house I will treasure the memories I take away with me. Let what we share tonight be a Christmas gift each of us gives freely to the other.”
Oh, she mourned, hearing the teacher in her upstage the lover, what a pompous idiot he must think I am!
But an expression touched his features then that she couldn’t decipher, a spasm of near-grief, almost. He took her face in his two hands and looked so deeply into her eyes that he might have been searching for her soul. Beneath her hand, his heart thumped unevenly. “Where were you when I was young and optimistic, Jessica Simms?” he murmured, inching his mouth toward hers. “And what have I done to deserve you now?”
By design or happy accident—she neither knew nor cared which—his kiss swept them past the awkwardness and recaptured the passion. Suddenly, his hands were everywhere, urging her toward the bed and undressing her every step of the way, layer by layer even to the abominable red underwear, until all that covered her were her satin camisole, bra and panties.
As if she’d caught his fever, her own hands deployed themselves with shameful abandon, tugging, sliding, stripping him too—not quite as expertly as he’d stripped her, perhaps, but with every bit as much fervor.
A trail of clothing marked their haste, her camisole at last slithering beneath his briefs, her bra hooking immodestly into the opening of his cords as they fell to the floor.
Breathless, eager, anxious, she felt the edge of the bed hit the back of her knees and sank to the mattress. He stood before her, naked and indecently gorgeous in the lamplight.
And then he was beside her, the scent of him—his skin, his hair—swamping her senses. The warmth of his big male body next to hers, the probing sensitivity of his hands as they discovered her, the dedication with which he readied her to accept him turned her to liquid fire.
But what made her love him was his gentleness, and his patience. Because for all that she wanted him so badly, she first had to overcome the knot of inhibition that held her hostage—a paralyzing relic of self-doubt, courtesy of the only other man she’d known, which allowed her to participate just so far and then no further.
Morgan sensed it and set about releasing her with an insight that moved her to tears.
At delicious, excruciating leisure, he kissed her fingertips, her throat, the soft skin of her inner elbow. He stroked her face, her shoulder, traced a line between her breasts and down her ribs, smoothed his hand over her hips and up her thigh.
And thus, by degrees so slight she barely noticed their progress, he sought her most intimate flesh, all the time murmuring words in her ear, calling her sweetheart, telling her she was beautiful.
And at that moment she believed him. She felt beautiful—voluptuously female and beautiful and desirable. Enough that she dared touch him, too, cradling the heat of him, marveling at the silken strength of him, and near melting with the need to feel him buried deep inside her.
But he had further exquisite torture to inflict. Like ripples in a pond, his touch aroused ever widening rings of awareness within her until, suddenly, she broke free of all restraint and exploded into arching spasms of response. The havoc they created to her equilibrium was purely indescribable.
Only then, when she lay quivering with pleasure and calling out his name in a throaty murmur, did he come to her. Not hastily or covertly, but with a smooth, sure power that allowed for no regrets, just soaring elation and a shimmering suspension that she never wanted to end.
He held her close, rocked within her, introduced her to an intimacy she’d never known before. It was enough. More than enough. Closing her hands over his shoulders, she thought dimly that she would remember him and this night for the rest of her life.
But he had not done giving. “Stay with me,” he whispered against her mouth, sliding his hands beneath her hips and lifting her to meet his suddenly accelerated rhythm.
She gasped at the deeper invasion, fought the old demons again as they rose up to hinder her, but they had lost their power. The confines of her existence shifted, broadened; a new horizon beckoned, and they were together, she and Morgan, riding blindly toward a destination as unavoidable as it was terrifying and exhilarating.
Her hands convulsed, her nails dug into the solid muscle of his shoulders, gouged frantically at his back. She heard a whimpering, a cry that echoed from somewhere beyond eternity, and realized it had come from her.
He answered her and for one endless, trembling moment held them both suspended. In spiraling slow motion, she felt herself expand beyond anything mortal or earthly, felt her heart fuse with his, felt her body aching and yearning and reaching...reaching....
The shattering of release, when it came, fractured her soul.
For a few, passion-drenched minutes, she lay beneath him, too saturated with emotion to move. Slowly, the separate parts of her assumed their separate identities again, though not quite as they had been before—she’d never again be that person! But the mind began to function, the knowledge to unwind.
Wrapping her arms tightly around him, she buried her face in his neck to stop herself from saying out loud that she loved him. Because at that moment, with the memory of his possession still echoing in her blood, she did love him. But she knew that if she told him so she would ruin the perfection of what they’d shared because it was the last thing he wanted to hear.
For a while longer, he remained with his big body covering hers, unmoving except for the diminishing thunder of his heart against her breast. Finally, he rolled to his side and took her with him.
His hair lay damp against his forehead, his skin, still lightly tanned from summer, gleamed. His eyes had the sated, sleepy look of a man well pleased with the woman in his arms. He had never been more handsome, never more charming.
“Well,” he said, pinning her securely in his arms and smiling down at her, “what can I say?”
Coming up with an answer was worse than picking her way through a minefield. “Merry Christmas?” she ventured.
She heard the laughter rumble deep within his chest. “And then some! Jessica Simms, you are quite exceptional and I hope you know that.”
But not so exceptional that he could say the words drumming repeatedly in her head. I love you, even if it is just for tonight.
Alarmed at t
he turn her thoughts persisted in taking, she wriggled away from him. How had such a notion managed to creep up on her? Falling in love with a man simply because he’d taken her to bed was a cliché that went out of date in the sixties, one only slightly less absurd than expecting him to reciprocate the sentiment.
“Hey,” he said, making a grab for her, “where do you think you’re going?”
“Back to my own room,” she replied, neatly evading him and swathing herself in the duvet. Never mind that that left him with only a sheet to keep himself warm; she could no more face the prospect of walking out of his room stark naked, feeling his eyes track her every step, than she could remain there and keep her shocking secret to herself. Another minute and he’d see it written on her face, even if she managed to keep her mouth shut. Dam him for turning on that lamp, anyway!
“Why?” he said. “What’s wrong with staying here?”
“What would Clancy think, if he knew?”
“Hang Clancy! This is about you and me.”
“Nevertheless,” she said primly, “I don’t care to advertise my private life and I don’t imagine you do, either.”
Shoving himself up onto one elbow, he watched her, and if she hadn’t known better she’d have thought he looked a little hurt at her sudden defection. “True, but that’s no reason for you to race off in such a hurry now without so much as a goodnight kiss.” Not the least abashed by the fact that the sheet had slipped to reveal more of him than it covered, he beckoned her with the forefinger of his other hand. “Come back here, Jessica. It’s not as if I’m expecting company in the next—”
He’d been about to go on cajoling her in the same light-hearted vein. She heard it in his voice, saw it in his lazy, slightly wicked smile. But all at once he bit off the words and flopped onto his back with a scowl. “On the other hand,” he finished, one of his sudden mood swings taking hold and souring the moment, “perhaps you’re right. Perhaps we are better off in separate beds.”
“Exactly.” Turning away from him, she stopped to collect her scattered clothing. He must not see the sudden sparkle of tears she dared not blink away for fear they’d splash down her face and betray her.
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