She waited, suspended in helpless anticipation. She could hear his breath, strangled and uneven, could feel the strain and effort it took for him to hold himself above her by the weight of his arms. She wanted him to give in. To just drop down upon her and take what was offered …but after a few interminable moments when nothing happened, she opened her eyes to gaze at him doubtfully.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said, and she realized remorse had struck even before the kiss!
And then, as if to put things right, he gave her a perfunctory kiss on the cheek and rolled to his feet. Bereft, Cammie couldn’t shift gears as fast as he could, but his withdrawal dug away at her self-esteem. Oh, God! What did he think of her? He couldn’t believe she was some besotted fan, could he?
Her cheeks grew warm. Then her whole body suffused with painful humiliation. She wanted to curl up into a ball and die.
For his part, Ty was trying to act like everything was as it had been before. He gathered up the sheaves of paper that had scattered across the bed and laid them on the adjoining nightstand. “I’m—sorry,” he murmured.
Sorry? Now, he was sorry for turning down her invitation?
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Cammie declared shortly, trying desperately to hide the hurt of his rejection.
“I don’t blame you for being mad,” he said, misinterpreting her feelings completely. “I’m not normally—on the prowl,” he said tensely, as if the words tasted foul. “That’s my father’s domain. I won’t blame you for not believing me, however. For God’s sake, I half undressed you when you were unconscious!” He let out a bark of embarrassed laughter, as Cammie struggled to a sitting position. “Put it down to the fact that I’m not used to an attractive woman lying on my bed.”
“You weren’t coming on to me,” Cammie disabused, sliding onto her hip and tucking her knees to one side. Here she’d been denigrating herself for being so easy and eager, and all the time he was blaming himself. She couldn’t have that. “If anybody was coming on to anybody, it was me to you.”
Ty’s brows jumped together. “What?”
“I thought you were rejecting me.”
“What?” he repeated, but it was a whisper, a rhetorical question for the gods or the silent walls surrounding them. “What are you saying?”
I’m saying, I want to be with you. To sleep with you. I want your arms around me and your body to possess me. I want to forget about the world outside and make love like we’re the last two people on earth.
“I’m saying—” she whispered, swallowing and licking her lips. “I’m saying—”
“You’re saying,” he urged softly, watching her mouth with pure fascination.
“Oh, Ty…”
That was all it took. Whatever misgivings he’d felt earlier were brushed aside in the wave of passion and heat that consumed them both. One moment he was staring at her, hard, waiting for her to voice her need for him, the next he was pushing her back against the soft coverlet, her blouse gaping open to reveal the scrap of lace that was her bra and the swell of her breasts.
“What are we doing? It’s like a dream or something.” His mouth pressed against her cheek, his hot breath and tongue dampening her skin.
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Her hands swept over his back, clutching his shirt spasmodically. I want you, she thought. I want you. I want you. I want you!
And then his mouth captured hers, his lips pushing down on hers as if to crush them to his, meld them together. A small sigh escaped her, half moan, half strangled cry of desire. His mouth was hard, and yet so, so soft. A paradox that fired her blood and made her want to hold his head in place so that the sweet fire of it would never, never stop!
His mouth traveled across the downy hill of her cheek to the lobe of her ear, biting gently, then a bit harder, striking fire to the inner core of her. Cammie clung to him, straining her body, wanting to be as close as possible.
When he kissed her again, his tongue thrust between her teeth, stabbing into the hot cavern of her mouth over and over again, mimicking the movements she wanted their bodies to perform. Cammie twisted beneath him, and Ty’s hand slid over her rib cage and across her breast, pressing her flesh hard beneath the white wisp of lace. A second later, his thumb and finger unsnapped the front clasp and the lacy scraps fell away. But when he began kneading her breast, Cammie moaned, the hard button of her nipple pressing against his palm.
“My God…” he muttered, as if the small blasphemy was torn from him.
Don’t stop, she thought incoherently. She linked one leg over his, a silly attempt to hold him to her. It was unnecessary, it appeared, as his body had begun that age-old rhythm against hers, their twin sets of jeans rubbing against each other, body parts that yearned to be together held in check and chafing. The hill of her femininity rose seemingly of its own volition to rub against the bulge at his zipper. Ty was no proof against it, pushing back against her with an urgency that caused Cammie’s breath to expel in a gasp.
Then suddenly, the fingers at her breast were replaced by a hot, wet mouth. Ty’s tongue circled the dark tip of her nipple. Cammie’s hands tangled in his thick hair, guiding him, and her head flung backward against the pillow, her back arching. My God! I’m going to climax just like this!
Her hand slid convulsively down his back, reaching his hip and the firm hardness of his buttocks. She held him close, moving feverishly beneath him. Heat suffused her face and her thoughts splintered.
And then he pulled back. She whimpered in protest. But his head moved lower. She opened her eyes just long enough to see the dark crown of his head before she felt his breath heating the crotch of her jeans. Nuzzling the most secret part of her femininity through her clothes, Ty brought Cammie to a sudden, shattering climax. Her fingers clutched convulsively in his hair.
“Oh, God, oh, God!” she gasped, shocked, thrilled, and moving so fast, she reached the pinnacle with a sharp cry of ecstasy, her body straining and tense, reaching, reaching…
Weakness invaded her almost instantly. She lay limp, chest heaving. When Ty lifted his head, she caught a quick glimpse of the burning desire in his gray eyes before she squeezed her own closed, unwilling to let the embarrassment and humiliation she was sure to feel hit just yet.
She already wanted to apologize, but her head was a jumble of noise and impressions and sheer joy. Later, she thought dimly, knowing she’d never scaled the heights of passion like this before—and they hadn’t even made love!
But Ty had other ideas, apparently, for he buried his face once again to the V of her jeans. She could hear the rubbing of his tongue against the heavy fabric but sensation was lost to her. It didn’t matter. The thought, the idea, the mental image was enough.
Cammie climaxed again in sudden unexpected delight. She wanted to protest that this was all for her and nothing for him, but all she could do was form the words: I love you, I love you, I love you…
Whether she voiced them or not, she never knew. All she could think about was sensation, and Ty made certain of that fact, over and over again.
CHAPTER NINE
Ty inhaled deeply, raised the weights held in either hand above his head as he lay on the workout bench, then slowly dropped the weights to each side again before repeating the procedure. Sweat dripped off his forehead. His biceps bulged and ached in protest. He’d never worked out so long and so hard before. His normal routine was to do a light run down the main street of Bayrock, hit the small exercise club that was scarcely more than one mirrored room where a gung-ho entrepreneur had begun a small health club business some five years earlier, then finish off with some minor weight-lifting.
Today he’d been at it for more than three hours.
He glanced around the room. Most of the residents paid scant attention to this local exercise club, but visitors and new immigrants to the town seemed to like it. Ty was, however, a regular and accepted by one and all as Jerry Mercer. Sometimes he got stared at, but it was mostly with a quizz
ical expression. The general public seemed to have forgotten what the real Tyler Stovall looked like, and his face touched only some dusty corner of their memory. Several people had asked if they knew him, and Ty’s answer was always a terse, “No.” His unapproachable and surly attitude kept most people at bay, though truthfully it was only the odd person who even approached him. Most folks came just for the workout, like he did, and they didn’t bother with socializing of any kind. It was perfect for Ty, so he could use the facility at will as a place to physically expunge his frustrations.
And frustrations he possessed by the truckload—especially these days!
It had been almost two weeks since Cammie had appeared out of the blue. What had originally been a scare, then a pleasant novelty, was fast turning into an out-and-out problem. First, but not necessarily foremost, as it turned out, he hadn’t left Bayrock yet. He was half packed and basically ready, but he was lollygagging around, tarrying like a lovesick schoolboy, mentally soft when it came to even looking at his lovely ex-stepsister.
What had happened? He didn’t even know for sure. From those first hours of disbelief he’d progressed through a series of emotions that had culminated in a serious bout of foreplay that had sent her rocketing into ecstasy and him into self-recrimination and unrequited desire. His body clamored for some kind of release, had been clamoring like mad ever since he’d brought Cammie to the heights. It was all he could do to even look at her anymore without getting an erection!
But, if he’d harbored any false hope that there might be a second chance at physical closeness, Cammie had disabused him of that thought, right quick. She’d been pretty clear on that subject, all right. Crystal clear, as a matter of fact.
I should have kept right on, he thought now, straining against the weights. At least I could be over this constant sense of sexual frustration. Or maybe still doing something about it…
Moving the weights above his head, he held them suspended a moment at arm’s length, staring at the barbells as if they held the answer to his dilemma.
That first morning together, in the throes of wild foreplay, Ty had had every intention of finishing what he’d started. What they’d started. But he’d taken too long. While Cammie still floated on the wings of sensation, Ty tenderly wiped back strands of moist hair from her face, kissed her softly, lost to his own desires, which were many at that particular moment. His hand slid downward, to the straining zip of his jeans, his body hard, ready and anxious.
“I love you,” she whispered. “I love you, I love you…”
The words penetrated Ty’s feverish brain. A tiny sting of something unpleasant followed. Memories danced around like fireflies, bright lights inside a dark space. Gayle’s voice whispering those three terrible little words—words of betrayal.
“I love you,” she’d purred. “Only you. You know that.”
Ty had harrumphed some kind of response. He hadn’t cared. They were in the heat and rhythm of lovemaking and he wasn’t really paying a whole lot of attention, if the truth were known.
But Gayle was insistent about it, totally obsessive. “Say you love me. Say it, Ty. Say it!”
“I—my God, Gayle!”
“Say it,” she demanded, picking up the rhythm and staring into his eyes. Ty wanted to turn away, to finish what they’d begun without all this silly drama. Well, all right, maybe it wasn’t silly, not to her anyway. But making a man express his love in the heat of passion was tantamount to a shotgun marriage. It was meaningless. There was no heart, no spirit to the avowal.
And though Ty wanted to say what she longed to hear, he couldn’t. He didn’t believe in love, marriage and the whole fantasy. He’d seen too much evidence to the contrary, and though he loved his mother and he knew she loved him, that was the only form of love he’d ever known. That wild “you’re all I need to live” kind of love was something he didn’t believe truly existed. It was a fantasy, an excuse. An emotion created to salve consciences and make the sex act somehow legal and moral.
To him, it was all a bunch of bunk. Sex was sex, and desire was desire, and affection was affection, but there was no deep, abiding something out there for philosophers and poets and saps in general to talk about.
It didn’t exist.
But Gayle was demanding. She nipped at his ear. “Say it, please, Tyler. I need to hear it.”
He’d blocked his brain. Oh, he wasn’t proud of it now; he hadn’t been at the time, either. But he’d been too far along in the act of sex to just pull out, and he was simply unable to give her what she wanted. So, he ignored her demands and swept ahead on a wave of pure sensation, and when he came inside her and flopped down upon her body, it was just a release of tension, a fulfillment of need.
Of course, she’d been ticked off, royal. Squirming from beneath him, she actually struck at his head, slapping his ear in futile punishment as she rolled from the bed. “You bastard!” she screeched.
“Hey!” he demanded, grabbing her hands and pulling her back down on top of him. “Stop that. I’m sorry. You know how I feel.”
“I’m pregnant, you louse,” she cried, huge alligator tears spilling down her cheeks and falling all over them both.
Shock ripped through him, electric and devastating. “Pregnant?” he repeated dumbly.
“It’s our baby, Tyler. Yours and mine. I want to love you and raise a family. But you can’t even tell me you love me!”
She would have slapped him again, but he still held her wrists in a crushing manacle. All he could see was his father, indiscriminately siring children with woman after woman, never caring, hardly ever counting his offspring!
Revulsion kicked in. Revulsion at himself. How could he be so stupid? “But we were protected,” he said, the first concrete thought that sank into his brain.
“That’s all you can say?”
“Condoms,” he said, his mind getting into gear at last. “We’ve been careful.”
“Not careful enough!” She writhed and fought and bit at his fingers. He released her, suddenly as anxious to be free of her as she was of him. “Well, guess what, Tyler? One of those condoms must have been defective. How else do you explain it? And you know what? I don’t care anyway. I want this baby and I want you!”
Tyler couldn’t move. He’d already been the victim of one paternity suit—a false one, since he’d never slept with the starlet in question. But getting him into a drunken make-out session with her was, at least to her thinking, apparently enough. She hadn’t expected him to even remember their evening together; she hadn’t expected him to know the truth. And another time, she would have been right, because just before he left Los Angeles forever, there’d been a period when he’d had difficulty knowing when to stop. Hard liquor had accounted for more than a few blackouts…
But not with the girl in question, and when he’d demanded DNA tests, she finally backed off. Of course the whole damn thing got splashed across the papers first, and that’s why he’d been so careful with Gayle. He couldn’t believe this was happening!
“We can’t have a baby together,” he told her without thinking. “I’m not interested in marriage. We’ve talked about this.”
“You’ve talked. I’ve listened,” she said bitterly. “I want more, Ty. Much more.”
“You set this up,” he realized in dawning horror. “You did it.”
“Bastard!” she cried again, striking at his face anew with flailing hands.
Anger swept away everything else. Oh, he’d been young and foolish and unable to see what was happening. The anger was more at himself, but he was furious with her, too, because so much of what he’d accused her of was true. He’d known Gayle’s character flaws and wanted her just the same. She’d seemed like him, lonely and aloof and in need of companionship even while keeping her independence.
He’d been wrong, wrong, wrong.
“If the baby’s mine, I’ll pay for its support, you know that,” he said through gritted teeth, clasping her arms again in a tight grip. �
�But I’ll be damned if you rope me into something I’m not ready for.”
“You’ll be sorry,” she whispered, and something in her face, some wild fury that swirled in her eyes, sent a shiver right down to the core of him. She meant it.
Later, he told himself he’d just been being melodramatic himself. Later, he believed that Gayle’s outburst had been merely a result of dashed hopes, of having his disinterest in marriage and family thrown in her face, so to speak.
And though he continued to see her through a few more social engagements they’d already made, it had marked the end of their relationship. Meanwhile, he’d been finishing up Escape From Eden, and his disillusionment with his life—which seemed to echo the sentiments of the protagonist in that story—grew with each passing day. What are you doing? he continually asked himself. Where is this going? What do you hope for? What, in God’s name, is next?
And then he was knocked down by a terrible truth, one that had the power to make him shudder to this day. He closed his eyes to the thought, nearly dropping the barbells at the memory, and with a sudden loss of strength he let them thunk to the floor on either side of him, his hands still gripped around the metal bar as if he couldn’t bear to let go.
“Mr. Mercer?” the girl in the leotard who’d helped him get started asked tentatively.
“I’m okay,” Ty muttered.
She giggled nervously. “Okay. We just want everyone to be safe and all.”
He flicked her a look out of the corners of his eyes. She smiled and tucked a lock of blond hair behind her ear. Her eyes blinked rapidly, and he wondered idly if this was where the phrase “batting one’s eyes” came from. Her whole demeanor was coy and interested.
And she was probably half his age.
It made him feel weary, as if life had passed him by long ago and at too fast a rate. It was his own fault, really, but that didn’t help how he was feeling now.
Climbing up from the bench, he moved over to the treadmill, conscious of the girl’s eyes following his every move. In the mirror straight ahead, he tried to assess what she saw in him, but he didn’t see how the scowling countenance that met his gaze could hold the least bit of attraction for anyone. He wasn’t fool enough not to understand his physical attributes; he’d been told about them so often that he’d have to be a complete idiot not to understand. He could, in fact, tick them off in a litany: strong, compact build; handsome, angular face; eyes as gray as the North Sea and possessed of a peculiar intensity that could range from anger to passion to anguish in the space of a heartbeat; and a slow smile that flashed with the kind of sexual brilliance that left his female fans swooning in the aisles.
Someday Soon Page 17
