One Summer’s Knight

by Kathleen Creighton

  No-not the only one! “God, Summer…” He felt the emptiness yawning before him, felt as though she were the only thing keeping him from being swallowed by it Like an animal in a trap, pain-racked and dazed, he growled, “What if I don’t want to let you go? Maybe-”

  She stopped him there with a shake of her head and a finger touched gently to his lips. “My children deserve more than just to be taken on as part of my…baggage. It’s okay, I understand. I don’t expect happily ever after. This is enough-for as long as I’m here, okay? It’s enough…” The last was a whisper, rough as sandpaper. And so were the words that followed. “Please, Riley…just close your eyes and…kiss me.”

  He’d never felt so conflicted, so torn. He was on fire with passion, but there was a heaviness inside him; he trembled with fury, but ached with tenderness. Never in all his life had he wanted a woman as much as he wanted this one, but the thought of taking her made him feel one good breath away from crying. He wanted to lift his head and cry out from the depths of his soul, scream to the heavens his rage at fate, which had given him his demons, the demons that would not let him give her all she deserved, and take from her what he needed.

  Instead, he simply did as she asked, and kissed her.

  And in the end, for that moment at least, it was what he needed; she was a healer, after all.

  He held her tightly at first, taking her mouth with a savagery that was more a product of frustration than of passion, plunging his tongue deep, with a growl in his throat, lungs burning and his heart exploding in primitive rhythms. And she gave it back and more, but with a little chuckle of pleasure that for some reason delighted him. It rolled up from her throat, passed from her mouth into his, rippled down into his chest, and he gave her back its echo.

  He drew back a little, and she brought her hands to the back of his neck, swirled her tongue over his lips and then between, opening to him, inviting him in, deeper…deeper. She was all warmth and generosity, her body lush and humid even in the coolness of the water. Her femininity seemed to surround him like a sultry summer night; she was the air he breathed; he absorbed her through the pores of his skin. He wondered whether he’d ever really made love to a woman before… whether all the experiences he’d had before had only been leading him to this…preparing him for this. For this woman.

  He slipped his arms under her buttocks and lifted her-or did he only suggest, and she come without hesitation? He didn’t know for certain-the water made it such an effortless thing. Her legs parted and slid around his hips and he nested himself in her warm and giving softness…just nestled there, hot and aching with his need. And groaned with the sweet agony of it, knowing it was a need that must not be filled. Not yet…

  He walked with her to the shallow water, still plundering her mouth with a hunger that only seemed to grow more insatiable with every kiss. The air cooled on their bodies, raising shivers and goose bumps and hardening her nipples so that they abraded his chest like pebbles. He wanted them in his mouth with an intensity he could taste, sharp and edgy as brass on his tongue. But not yet. Not yet…

  She made a small growling sound of protest when he lowered her to the steps, uncoiled her legs and arms from around him and tore his mouth from hers, until he muttered, “Sorry..but before this goes any further, there’s something I have to do.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, to protest, and he could see the struggle play out across her expressive face-frustration warring against gratitude. Then she nodded her acceptance. He kissed her once more, lingeringly, promising… asking patience. Then he snatched up the towel he’d left on the deck, knotted it carelessly around his hips and left her there.

  He wasn’t gone long; it only seemed like forever to her. She’d been afraid that the fever that had driven her to do this insane, this aberrant thing might cool before he came back, but she’d underestimated the intensity of her hunger for him. Her whole body vibrated with it She waited for him, sitting on the steps, half submerged in the tepid water, rocked by the rhythm of her own life forces and counting the seconds of his absence in the slow drumbeat of the pulses that throbbed in her swollen, secret places.

  When he came it was almost without a sound, but she’d have needed none to know he was there; every nerve in her body sprang joyfully to life, humming with excitement. Languid with arousal, her breath heavy in her throat, she tilted her head and watched him as he dropped the towel on the flagstones and stepped into the pool. She couldn’t see his face; his body was a dark sculpture silhouetted against the house lights. Like a phantom, she thought. My phantom lover. And somehow that made it easier, to think of him as something not quite real. Not a real man but a fantasy…a dream that would vanish in the light of reality. Or like Cinderella’s Prince, at the stroke of midnight.

  She felt him ease in behind her on the step, felt his legs slide around her so that the silky unsheathed hardness of him nestled in the cleft of her buttocks. She sighed and would have arched back against him, but unexpectedly, almost roughly, he pushed her forward, gathered her hair in his hand and thrust it aside, baring her vulnerable neck. He lowered his mouth to her nape, savagely demanding, raking her tender skin with his teeth, marking her there with his sucking, staking his claim on her in that most primitive and elemental way so that she gasped at the surprise, the raw sexuality of it. Then she began to whimper as desire exploded inside her with such force it frightened her.

  She was on the edge of panic when, with a gentling sigh, he abruptly leaned back and drew her with him so that she lay on her back on top of him, completely open and exposed to his sensitive hands…his long, questing fingers. Exposed and vulnerable…bewildered at the flood of feeling that had all but swamped her. Trembling. The warm, humid night air cooled the water on her naked body, raising goose bumps and hardening her nipples until they hurt.

  “This is for you. Just for you.” The words were a whisper of warm breath against her ear. She felt his hands warming her breasts, and then the pressure of his fingers on her tight, aching nipples. A shaft of pure need, bright and sharp as pain, arrowed through her belly and deep into her core, and she arched her back and uttered a high, thin, panting cry as she turned her head, frantically seeking him. His head came down, blocking light and thought. As his mouth angled across hers, swallowing up her cry with a masculine growl of satisfaction and encouragement, his hands swept down over her ribs and belly, and the friction of his fingers rubbing on her chilled skin made her burn, but inside. His hands cradled her hips, slipped down and under the backs of her thighs, lifted and drew them apart. She’d never felt so utterly vulnerable, so exposed…so naked and helpless.

  Do you trust me?

  Where had they come from, those words? Were they a reminder or a plea?

  Trust me. A great shudder passed through her body. With emotion swelling inside her like a tsunami, she lifted her arms high above her head, thus opening herself to him even more, making of herself an offering, totally without restriction or restraint. She reached blindly for him, found his shoulders and then his neck, clung to him and whimpered as his fingers stroked her, soothed her, parted her, pushed into her yielding softness…and then withdrew… slid inside her again, gently at first, then deeper, deeper…until she felt as if he touched the very center of her being. It was then that she felt herself coming apart, as though her physical self was separating into its individual atoms and then merging with all the bright electrical impulses that made up her emotional self…her soul, her being… so that it was no longer possible to distinguish one from the other. Her physical self and her emotional self were one, and somehow she knew that neither would ever be the same again. She held on to him, to Riley, the man who had brought her to this, dazed and sobbing partly with rage, partly with rapture, and with hopelessness, too. And fear. And she thought, What have you done to me? I trusted you. And you’ve shown me heaven, knowing I can never have it Knowing this is just a fantasy that must end at the stroke of midnight…

  It was later, much lat
er, when Riley carried her to the nearest chaise and laid her gently, tenderly down. He ached so exquisitely, the pressure inside him was so intense he feared he would explode before he’d even had a chance to savor the feel of her feminine softness around him. He was surprised then, and humbled, too, when he felt her body enfold him, almost immediately swell and heat and quicken to his urgent rhythms, and finally, one last time and even as his own body tightened and trembled, then seemed to break apart in total devastation, he heard her small, wild cry and felt her body pulsing with his, drawing him out, nurturing his release… healing, even then.

  They lay together in the aftermath, bathed in the warm, soft night, lulled by the soothing music of the water, stroking each other with lazy, sated fingers. Riley couldn’t remember ever having felt so relaxed in his life before. Or so…he realized with a shock that the word he was looking for was happy. He felt dazed with happiness, dizzy with it…awed by it, as if he’d spent his entire life up to this point under clouds and was seeing the sun for the first time. When Summer sighed and sat up, stretching and combing her hair back with her fingers, he felt bereft, even though he knew and understood that they couldn’t have stayed where they were.

  “Come upstairs with me,” he whispered, drawing his fingers lightly down her spine. But when she looked at him with longing and shook her head, he understood that, too.

  So he sighed and drew her down for one more lingering kiss. And when she’d pulled away from him and turned to pick up her dress from where she’d left it in a puddle like melted butter on the deck, and her fingers were deft and hurried on the buttons, he gently and wryly teased her, saying, “What’s your hurry? Do we turn into pumpkins at the stroke of midnight?”

  He didn’t understand what made her burst into ironic and pain-filled laughter.

  Chapter 14

  The next three days were a time of waiting. Hurricane Angela, now a category-three storm, wobbled her way through the Atlantic, gathering strength. She would only grow more powerful the longer she vacillated, drawing energy from the warm ocean waters. Storm flags were up all along the coast from Savannah to the Outer Banks, with the National Guard positioned to help with the evacuations, if necessary. The weather stayed overcast, hot and oppressive.

  While the Southeast waited to see what Hurricane Angela would do, Riley and Summer waited for a phone call. The trap had been set; now all they could do was wait and see if the quarry they sought would take the bait.

  To Riley, the atmosphere in his house seemed to have turned as gray and heavy as the weather, sultry with unvoiced passion and weighed down by the awareness that regardless of the outcome of the FBI’s “sting,” there could be no happy ever-after outcome for what had begun between himself and Summer. Once the threat to her and her children had been eliminated, by whatever means, she would leave his life forever; she was adamant about that. And he was left on the horns of a terrible dilemma, knowing that the circumstances that would give her back her life would, in effect, take away his.

  Because he was in love with her. Of that he was no longer in any doubt. The thought of his life beyond her leaving loomed like the vast emptiness he’d known all his life, and felt sometimes now even as he held her in his arms.

  Sometimes when he looked at her, when he looked at the children…when Helen squinched up her face in that imp-look she got just before she bopped him on the nose with one of her pile-driver kisses, or when David looked up from the computer at him with that sudden brightening of joy that erased the pleat of worry between his eyes…then he’d teeter on the brink, thinking, Maybe… maybe I could. But each time, the fear drove him back from the edge.

  Meanwhile, the schedule of their days had reverted to that awkward time right after she and the children had first come to stay with him, when she’d been avoiding him and doing her best to keep the kids and animals out of his way as well. But at night, after the children were asleep and the house was quiet, she would come to him as he swam, dropping her clothing on the flagstones and slipping silently into the pool and into his arms. She would not sleep with him, nor share his bed, nor any other bed in his house, no matter how briefly; but in the warm, dark, womblike water, it seemed she could allow herself to shed the constraints of motherhood and revel in the primitive joy of simply being a woman.

  They made love in and out of the water and in every imaginable way, with the fervent abandon of wartime lovers, knowing it could all end tomorrow with the ringing of a telephone.

  Midway through Friday morning Danell beeped Riley out of a conference with a client. Because he knew she wouldn’t do such a thing unless it was urgent, his heart gave a lurch and accelerated as he went to meet her in the hallway.

  “Who is it?” His voice sounded like a truckload of gravel.

  Danell shrugged and said with a frown, “Sounds like one of those guys on the commercials, you know-‘Don’ worry, be happy’. Hey-he swore you’d want to talk to him. Man, he better be right Said it was personal-”

  “It’s okay,” Riley passed her with a reassuring touch on her arm and headed for his office. He picked up the phone, gripped it hard. “Hey, Brasher, what’s up?”

  “They say we got to go now,” the deep musical voice answered without preamble. “Say the hurricane be here by tonight.” There was a pause and an apologetic sigh. “Well…she’s pretty upset, you know…doesn’t want to go.”

  “Oh, Lord.” Riley closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead hard with his fingertips.

  “Well… she’s scared, you know.” Brasher’s chuckle sounded almost tender. “She’s lackin’ up a fuss pretty good, too.” There was a pause, and then in a voice as gentle and inexorable as the tide, he said, “Boy, you know you’re the only one can quiet her down… make her go. You bettah come now. She’ll listen to you.”

  Riley nodded, though there was no one there to see. He felt as though a lead weight had settled on his heart. “I’ll be there,” he said finally. “As soon as I can.”

  He broke the connection and sat for a moment frowning at the windows, at skies that matched his mood. Then he went and stuck his head around the corner into Danell’s office. “Give me five minutes to wrap this up,” he said, indicating the conference room. “Cancel the rest of the day, and then go on home and batten down the hatches. You got plenty of milk, bread and flashlight batteries?”

  Danell rolled her eyes at him. Like him, she lived far enough from the coast not to have to worry about tidal surges and such, and when the last big hurricane-Hugo-had come through Charleston she’d been in high school somewhere in Alabama. She didn’t really have any idea what they might be in for.

  It took him three times longer than normal to get home. Although the Charleston area hadn’t been given the official order to evacuate, the tourists and the faint of heart-those who remembered Hugo all too well-were already heading out. At the last minute he stopped in at the Wal-Mart where he’d lately become a regular customer and picked up milk, some lanterns, a portable radio and a good supply of batteries, just in case. The lines were long there, too.

  Even with all that, it was early enough that when he pulled into his driveway, Summer met him at the door, sure something must be up. Her face was pale and set, but her eyes were bright and battle-ready.

  “Have you heard? Did they call?”

  Resisting a powerful desire to gather her into his arms and shelter her, he shook his head and moved past her to set his shopping bags on the island countertop. He could hear the children’s shouts and laughter out by the pool.

  “Something’s come up,” he said quietly as he put the gallon jugs of milk in the refrigerator, closed the door, wadded up the plastic bags and tossed them under the sink. “I’m gonna have to go and take care of something.” He heard her little gasp of dismay and steeled himself against it.

  “These are for you,” he continued, keeping his tone matter-of-fact, not letting himself look at Summer’s face as he calmly spread the radio, flashlights and batteries he’d bought out on the co
unter. “In case I don’t get back…in case the power goes out-as you know it can.” His mouth twisted, more a quirk than a smile. He took a breath, then headed for the stairs, jerking at his tie and talking as he went. She followed him silently. “If it does, the security system for the house has a battery-powered backup that should last for a couple power’s never been out for more than an hour or so at the most, so you should be okay. Let’s see…there’s bottled water in the cupboards, and you can use what’s in the pool for washing and flushing and such…”

  He turned into his bedroom, and she stopped in the doorway and leaned against the frame. He could feel her watching him as he undressed, tossed his jacket, shirt and tie on the bed, then sat down on it to take off his shoes. His movements were jerky with anger-not at her, although she couldn’t know that. How could she know he felt guilty for leaving her, resentful for having to, and defensive because of it? He strode into his dressing room wearing only trousers, footsteps heavy with his anger, resentment and guilt.

  “They’re evacuating the islands,” he called back to her as he rummaged for Dockers and windbreaker, polo shirt and athletic shoes. “I’ve got to go and help somebody…somebody I’m responsible for.”

  “Is it Brasher?” Summer asked, though she didn’t want to.

  For a moment there was silence, and then quietly from the depths of the closet, he replied, “Yeah, Brasher’s one…”

  “And the woman…the one I saw you talking to?” Oh, she wished she hadn’t said that! She’d tried not to, felt miserable the moment she did, but somehow it just wouldn’t be denied. Too late to contain the words, she stood dumbly with her hand clamped over her mouth and watched Riley come slowly around the corner from the dressing room, carrying his shoes in one hand and holding his pants together at the waist with the other. Neither Rhett nor Prince nor hero now, but just a man, an ordinary man with a life and secrets she couldn’t share.