by Susan Wiggs
The surface of her skin felt superheated. Her face, which only moments ago had been frozen, now flushed, and her limbs and eyelids seemed pleasantly heavy. This was no mere case of jet lag.
She tried to rationalize the feelings away. Honestly, how dumb did she have to be, falling for all this Naked Ape-style primal behavior? So a guy stoked the fire in her stove, so what? That didn’t mean she wanted to rip his clothes off and jump his bones.
Except that she did.
Noah straightened up, turning to her as long fluttering ribbons of flame engulfed the logs. “That ought to do you for a while.”
Sophie didn’t stop to analyze or think through her actions. She went to him and grabbed the front of his sweatshirt and yanked him close, planting upon his surprised mouth a kiss of shameless, aggressive desire.
He tasted exactly the way she wanted him to taste, of some kind of sweetness that had no name. He smelled like the winter air, the woods and faintly of exhaust, a combination she found impossibly sexy. Within seconds, she lost herself in the texture of his mouth, the slight growth of beard on his face, the fall of dark, wavy hair brushing against her cheeks.
As though he had known this was coming, he deepened the kiss with a hunger he didn’t bother to hide. Did he know how much of a turn-on his frank lust was? It was like lighting a match to a pool of kerosene. His hands found the shape of her, and she realized with a thrum of excitement that he was exploring the quickest way to get her out of her clothes.
Which was how, approximately thirty seconds after she attacked him with a kiss, she found herself standing on the braided rug in front of the roaring fire, wearing nothing but silk tap pants and a camisole.
So far neither of them had said a word, yet when she looked at his face, she felt such a pure understanding and affinity that any speech would be redundant. There were so many reasons this was a bad idea, yet it felt absolutely right. Maybe her need to be with him like this was part of the lingering post-trauma madness.
Still. She felt compelled to speak up while there was still time to put an end to this. She said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “Don’t you dare be sorry.” He yanked his red Cornell sweatshirt one-handed over his head, revealing his bare chest, banded with muscle, a patch of dark hair adorning the middle, another line of hair arrowing downward. His jeans hung low, seeming to be casually perched on his hipbones. The top button of the faded blue jeans had already been undone. She stopped short of fanning herself.
She forced herself to say, “You should go. Please.”
“You want me to stay.”
For someone she’d just met, he seemed to know her too well. “The feeling will pass, I’m sure.”
“Why would you want that?” He took something out of his pocket. “Just so you know, I have protection.”
Sophie couldn’t get pregnant. She’d had her tubes tied after Max, but she didn’t say anything. Too much information. “Having protection isn’t the same as being safe. This is just so insane,” she said, knowing her argument was weak. “Look, if we’re going to do this, then we should honestly discuss it.”
“Why? So you can talk yourself out of it? No way.”
She froze, willing herself to object, to stop herself, to stop them both. The moment passed, and she hadn’t spoken up. There were no objections to be made that he couldn’t counter. There were no kisses she could resist. He made her feel like a hormone-crazed teenager again, discovering sex as though for the first time. He was marvelously spontaneous, uninhibited, and when Sophie was with him, she found it easy to step into a moment where absolutely nothing else mattered. Her brush with death in The Hague had changed her. In the past, she’d always favored putting off gratification for the future. Then when she was a hostage, she’d regretted the many times she hadn’t acted on desire, the times she’d put something off, thinking she had all the time in the world.
She didn’t have all the time in the world. She only had this moment. This had never happened to her before. She found it both powerful and liberating to simply sink into a moment with him. To not have to plan ahead or map out logical consequences—it was a first for her. She had forgotten the deep comfort of sleeping in a man’s arms, or perhaps she had never known it. Not like this.
Eleven
Noah lay in a tangle of quilts and blankets, eyes shut, arms around Sophie Bellamy. He felt as though his whole body was smiling. This was something he had not felt in far too long—that warm, slack-limbed, postsex bliss, a feeling that made you want to stop the world and just float along for a while.
The last thing he’d expected from someone like Sophie Bellamy was that they’d wind up making love so soon. Yet from the moment he’d met her, she had managed to surprise him. There was a lot he didn’t know about her, but the things he recognized were far more powerful—the loneliness in her eyes, a mirror of his own. The undeniable heat of mutual attraction, which neither of them bothered to hide. So maybe it wasn’t surprising that they’d leapfrogged over the usual dating rituals.
He opened his eyes to discover it was still light out, though the afternoon shadows lay long across the hillocks of snow. He also discovered the most amazing sense of well-being, even more than the usual satisfaction of just getting laid. Why was that? What was going on? He studied the woman lying on the bed, sound asleep.
He’d held other women, sure. He’d drifted with them in a postcoital haze. But Sophie felt…different in his arms in a way he couldn’t quite explain to himself. Her head lay just so in the slight hollow between his shoulder and collarbone. Her silky blond hair spilled over his chest and her slender arm lay in gentle possession across his bare torso.
Never had delivering a stack of firewood been so rewarding. Taking care not to disturb her, he got up to take a leak and stoke the fire. The flickering flames painted the homey room, and late-afternoon light streamed in through the windows. He hoped she liked it here. He hoped she was planning to stay for a long time. Sophie Bellamy. Who the hell was she, anyway? He knew virtually nothing about her, except that an afternoon with her blew the doors off every other encounter he’d ever had.
He was drawn to her bag, which lay open on the table. Beside that were two passports, one from the U.S., the other from Canada. Flipping through the watermarked pages, he saw exotic seals and stamps from all over. He wondered what it was like, that life of travel. He’d never been anywhere, though he’d always meant to get a passport, just in case. She was so beautiful even a passport photo couldn’t make her homely. Born in Vancouver, British Columbia. June 9, 1969.
That made her quite a bit older than Noah. Hell, a lot older. He was momentarily startled, but then decided he had absolutely no problem with the difference in their ages, hell no. She was incredible. She sure didn’t look thirty-nine. She had to know that, but Noah strongly suspected the age difference would not thrill her.
Fine, he wouldn’t tell her. That wasn’t a lie. It was just…not telling her. She didn’t need to know her former law school classmate, Bertie Wilson, used to be his babysitter. If this wasn’t going to amount to anything, then there would be no harm, no foul. If it turned out—please, God—to be something important, then he’d tell Sophie after she got to know him better, and she’d realize it was a nonissue.
He felt so damned good that he nearly woke her up to tell her so. He wouldn’t, though. He kind of wished she would sleep forever; Sleeping Beauty, as relaxed and flawless as a dream.
Of course, when she was awake, she was pretty fun, too. Yet despite the fact that he had only just met her, he knew on some gut level that she probably wouldn’t wake up as happy as she had drifted off in his arms. She seemed to be the type to think things through and analyze them to death, and he figured if she thought about the fact that they’d fallen into bed together a few seconds after hello, she’d come up with some serious objections.
He preferred to focus on the positive. There was a lot to be said for going for broke, which they had, all afternoo
n long. For a small house, the place had yielded a good variety of places to make love. They had started in a clothes-ripping frenzy on the oval braided rug in front of the wood-burning stove, with a few sofa pillows and an Afghan thrown in for comfort. After that they’d moved to the large, deep, claw-foot bathtub, making creative use of soaps and oils that smelled like evergreen and spearmint, somehow managing to keep her stitches dry. And finally they’d ended up here, in the high bed with a hand-hewn frame of unpeeled birch, piled high with quilts and fluffy pillows.
He slid back under the covers with her. She smelled incredible. Even the sound of her breathing turned him on. A few minutes later, he felt her waking up. He was freakishly attentive to her every nuance. She didn’t really move or change the cadence of her breathing—it was more subtle than that. He simply felt a shift from sleeping Sophie to waking Sophie. He lay still, waiting for her to take in the fact that she was in bed with him.
It started with her hand, which lay palm down across his chest. Her fingertips slipped over the ridges of his ribs as though there was a message on him written in Braille.
This was pretty much all it took to turn him on again. It was the simplest of formulas—Sophie’s touch equaled instant erection.
Her wandering hands slid downward, and he heard her sigh lightly. Then she gave a loud gasp and rolled away from him on the bed, clutching the sheet against her.
He stopped himself from groaning aloud as he propped up on one elbow and turned to her.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Want me to check?”
She stumbled out of bed, pulling a blanket with her. Noah heard a dull thud followed by a hiss of pain and the softest of swearwords.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I stubbed my toe.”
“Take it easy,” he advised. “If I have to fix you up again I might have to start charging you.”
A light snapped on. She was across the room, wearing the blanket like a toga. Her silky blond hair spilled down over her shoulders. This was the first time he’d seen it unbound. It was longer than he’d expected and it made her look young and vulnerable. Her eyes darted around the room, settling on a clock on a shelf.
“Nearly five,” he said.
“A.m. or p.m.?”
He smiled at her expression, which was endearingly confused. “In the evening. And we’re still snowed in. So you might as well come back to bed.”
She gasped again, an echo of the surprised sound she had made when she came. Agitated, she pulled the blanket tighter around her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t…I mean, we’re not…”
She was awash with regrets. He could see that. She was drowning in mortification. Rather than letting her squirm, he intervened. “Hey, take it easy,” he said, offering a reassuring smile.
“I’m not upset,” she said. “Just…disappointed in myself.”
“You didn’t disappoint me.” He reached for her; she stepped out of range. “Sorry,” he said, palms out.
“You needn’t apologize. I take full responsibility for my actions. It’s just that I’m used to being on my own.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I won’t be that guy.”
“What guy?”
“That scary guy who won’t leave you alone.”
Her lips twitched as though she wanted to smile. “That’s not what I’m worried about.”
He got out of bed, making no effort to cover himself. “Good. Because there’s nothing scary about me.”
She practically gave herself whiplash, looking away from him. He grinned and shook his head, taking his time as he put on his boxers and jeans.
“Okay, I’m half-decent,” he informed her.
She cleared her throat, looked at him. Her gaze skimmed over his bare chest, and he felt turned-on all over again.
“You should go,” she said softly.
There was something about her stance, so still and stiff with anxiety, that moved him. He crossed the room, brushed his knuckles lightly across her collarbone. “I’d rather stay.”
“That’s not going to work for me.”
Even as she was gently rejecting him, she made him smile. He didn’t know why that was, but she did. Yet as she spoke, she looked as though she needed to go to confession or something.
To distract her, he checked her knee. “Looks okay. It’s healing nicely.”
“You did a good job.” Despite her words, she still seemed uncomfortable.
“Listen,” he said, “don’t feel bad. And for what it’s worth, I didn’t come here for this, I swear.”
“And I didn’t mean to…grab you. Attack you.”
“So that was just sort of a bonus.”
“Honestly,” she said, “that’s not me.”
“Well, then, I guess I should get to know you. Tell me about yourself.”
“Trust me, I’m not that interesting.”
Right, he thought, thinking of all the stamps from exotic places in her passport. “Sophie, you reading the phone book would be interesting. Suppose I Google you on the Internet.”
“Please don’t Google me. I hate when people Google me.” She shot him a look of warning. All right, then. She wasn’t going to level with him about whatever it was she’d left behind. Not yet, anyway. She then bent down and picked up her clothes one-handed, still holding the blanket in place. As if he didn’t know what her body looked like underneath, as if he hadn’t traced its curves, drawn cries of pleasure from her, held her next to him for hours. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Never done what before?” He wanted to hear her say it.
She straightened up and looked him in the eye. “Sex with a…stranger. That’s what I’ve never done before.”
He grinned. “Me, neither. It was great. I’m glad we went for it. I like you, Sophie. I really like you.”
She could probably tell from the expression on his face what he was going to say next. “I really do think you should go,” she repeated.
He picked up his sweatshirt but didn’t put it on. Instead, he stretched, folding his arms behind his head, flexing his biceps. “You already said that.”
“And yet you’re still here.” Judging by her expression, he figured she liked the biceps, but then she seemed to shake herself and marched into the bathroom. “I thought you weren’t going to be that guy,” she called through the door.
“I’m not.”
“Then what’s with all the posing and flexing?”
He laughed. “I’m going,” he said. He had to check on the animals, anyway.
She came out of the bathroom before he got his shirt on. For one unguarded second, she eyed his bare chest with an expression of pure lust and he wanted her all over again. It was crazy. In one afternoon she had accomplished what a half a year of his family’s clucking sympathy, his friends’ beer-fueled commiseration and a half-dozen awkward setup dates had failed to do. Sophie Bellamy had made him forget he was emotional roadkill. She didn’t know any of that, though, and he knew he wouldn’t tell her, not now, anyway. She was skittish as hell when she wasn’t lost in sex.
With an effort, he looked away from her and she left while he finished dressing. A few minutes later he found her in the next room, checking for messages on a handheld device.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
She nodded. “But I missed a call from my son. I can’t believe I did that.”
Beating herself up again, Noah observed. “You’re jetlagged. Wounded. Not to mention snowed in. Call him now.”
She dialed her cell phone, listened for a minute. “No answer.”
“It’s a snow day. He’s probably out playing in it.” Noah sat down on a bench by the door to pull on his boots. “I played hockey all through school,” he said. “I still do, sometimes. There’s a men’s rec league in town.”
“Max loves it. Half the year, he’s a baseball fanatic, and the other half, it’s hockey.”
“What
about you?” he asked. “Do you skate?”
“Used to. I haven’t in a long time. I’d like to try it sometime.”
“We’ll go as soon as your knee’s better.”
He zipped and fastened his jacket, pulled on his helmet and gloves. She peered through the sidelight by the door. “It’s really dark,” she said. “Does that thing have a light?”
“Yep.”
“Well, then. Thanks…for the firewood. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem. And thank you.” He instantly realized that was totally the wrong thing to say. “I mean, I had a—” He stopped. A good time? An amazing time? A possibly life-altering time? He quit talking and did something he knew he was better at. He kissed her, pressing her back against the wall and himself against her. “I’m not so good at talking,” he whispered, his mouth still close to hers. “Most of my patients don’t need it. But listen, come have dinner with me.”
“No.” But she didn’t push him away. Instead, she wound her arms around his neck.
“You’ve got no food in this house. Give me about an hour to fix something.”
“I’m not—”
“If I don’t see you then, I’m coming back.” He wanted to kiss her one more time but decided against it. She wanted his kiss. He sensed that from the way her lips softened and parted just a little, the way her eyelids lowered.
With an effort of will, he pulled back. Not a bad strategy, to leave her wanting more. “See you in an hour.”
Twelve
For several minutes after Noah Shepherd left, Sophie stayed pressed against the wall as though he still held her there, imprisoned by her own desire to keep him close. The room seemed instantly dimmer, the popping sounds in the wood-burning stove louder. What on earth had come over her, falling into bed with this guy, the two of them acting like a couple of overheated teenagers? Was this living spontaneously? Letting go of control?
