Not Even for Love

by Sandra Brown

  The consequences could be met later, the piper paid later, but not now. Not now, when his mouth invaded the hollows of hers. Not when his hands touched her so exquisitely that her mind reeled under the impact.

  “Jordan,” he groaned softly, and pushed her away slightly. “I want to see all of you.” His fingers deliberately and deftly worked the buttons of her blouse until it hung free. With self-imposed, agonizing care, he eased it over her shoulders.

  His eyes dropped to her chest. The sheer lacy bra was a voyeur’s dream. It hid nothing, enhanced everything. The glossy flesh-toned fabric made her skin beneath glisten. The rosy nipples pressed against that tight, shimmering veil invitingly, daring the observer to touch and kiss.

  Self-denial became Reeves’s obsession. His thumb hooked under the satin straps and gradually pulled them from her shoulders and upper arms, staring all the while at the two perfectly shaped breasts that were revealed to him by tiny degrees.

  Finally his patience was rewarded and they fell free of the gossamer fetter. Only then did he unclasp the garment and remove it completely.

  Jordan had remained motionless, watching his face and the tender expressions so apparent on it. It gave her a heady, victorious feeling to know that she could evoke such emotion from him. Had he asked her to, she would have torn the bra from her body. But she knew, as did he, that this way was better.

  Just as a connoisseur glories in the properties of the wine, studies its color, its bouquet, twirls it in his glass, before taking the first sip, so had Reeves treasured her before availing himself of her body.

  His eyes wandered over her, taking in the creamy texture of her skin, the delicate color of the crests, the gentle curves that flagrantly declared her femininity. Then his hands joined his eyes in that most pleasant expedition.

  “You’re beautifully made,” he said gruffly. The dark russet hair tickled her skin as he dipped his head and kissed her breasts, each in turn, lingeringly, slowly.

  They had all night.

  In silent agreement they backed away from each other. He rid himself of the rest of his clothes. She shyly stepped out of her jeans, but left on the wispy protection of sheer panties.

  When they were lying on one half of the blanket, covered by the other half, he pulled her to him. His heavy leg rested on hers, moving hypnotically.

  She caught the sides of his head in eager hands and drew him down to her lips. His tongue plunged deep into her mouth. She grew dizzy under its avid searching and clasped his shoulders to keep from falling into the sublime abyss that lured her so seductively.

  “I’ve got to have you, Jordan.” His words were barely audible as his mouth left hers to plant kisses across her chest. Her breasts were gently ravaged. Twin buds of desire rose up to meet the wet heat of his mouth. He gave as much as he took. His tongue and lips blessed her with the honey of his mouth.

  “Don’t stop,” she begged when he moved his lips away from her tingling breasts. But the request went unheeded as his mouth trailed over her stomach and past her navel. “Reeves…!” she gasped when she felt that urgent sweetness tugging on her skin in places that had never known a kiss before.

  Her panties were dragged down her hips and legs until she was free of them. Still kissing her, his hand slipped between the slender columns of her thighs and touched her where she most longed to know him.

  His fingers commenced a gentle exploration that began as a mere fluttering but became a stroking search that knew no bounds.

  “Sweet… you feel… Look at me, Jordan, please… look at me while I touch you… Precious…”

  She obeyed every command and heedlessly raced toward the culmination his hands and mouth promised.

  “Say you want me,” he pleaded. His fingers bespoke an entreaty all their own.

  “I do,” she moaned.

  “Say it, Jordan. Tell me.”

  He covered her with his own body and she felt the hard, throbbing evidence of his desire against the insides of her thighs. “I want you, Reeves.” She shuddered at his tentative probing. “Please.”

  Then he was inside her, strong and massive, filling her completely, eliminating a void, giving her all of himself.

  He buried his face in the fragrant cloud of her black hair and whispered endearments, accolades. Her hands locked behind his back.

  His head, lying next to hers, turned until he was looking at her and he said, “Don’t move for a while. Just surround me….You can’t know how good it feels.”

  “Explain it to me.”

  And he did, in a language that their bodies understood long before their minds could grasp its import.

  CHAPTER 9

  What do you want to be when you grow up?”

  She laughed and snuggled closer to him, if that were possible, and settled her lips at the base of his throat. “Don’t you think I’m grown up already?” she purred as she nibbled at his neck.

  “You’ve grown up in all the right places.” His hands admired those places.

  Temporarily their passion had been slaked. They were cuddled together under the single blanket. The floor was hard underneath them, but neither noticed. Jordan’s backpack, emptied of its contents and wrapped in Reeves’s sweater, served as their pillow. The logs in the stove, well seasoned, crackled and hissed cheerfully. The golden reflection of the flames danced on the dark walls.

  His fingers traced her spine. “Do you intend to stay in that newsstand for the rest of your life?”

  “I can’t. I was fired.”

  The fingers stilled. “Fired? When? Why?”

  She laughed softly. “Yes, to the first question. This morning to the second. Because my boss saw the story about my engagement to Helmut and assumed that I wouldn’t be needing my job anymore to the third. The boss’s daughter inherited my position before my corpse was cold,” she said lightly.

  “Sonofa—That was a rotten thing to have happen. No wonder you were so mad at me this morning. I’m sorry, Jordan. Can I help? Is there something I can do?”

  “No. At first I was upset, to say the least. Now”—she moved one slender leg between the warmth of his—“now it doesn’t seem to matter so much. The job in Lucerne has served its purpose. After Charles’s death, I needed to live and work, breathe, without the interference of well-intentioned friends and my parents. This time I’ve spent in Switzerland has been like a three-year vacation. I need to find something to do that’s more challenging and productive.”

  “Will you return to the States?” Studiously they were avoiding talking of Helmut and the role he would play in her future. He was there, lurking in the background of their minds, but neither wanted to speak his name aloud. Apparently, since he was asking about her going back to America, Reeves had finally accepted her insistence that she wasn’t going to marry the Swiss.

  “Yes, probably, but I don’t know where,” she replied. “I think I’ll try to find a nice, quiet place and settle down to write. That’s something I’ve always aspired to do.”

  “What type of material do you want to write?”

  “Sex manuals,” she quipped.

  “How-tos?”

  “Yes.”

  A laugh vibrated his chest, where she rested her head.

  “Oh, yeah?” He clasped her to him and rolled her atop him.

  “That requires a lot of research, you know.”

  “I’m willing to sacrifice whatever is necessary,” she teased, and leaned down to taste his mouth. It tasted like her own.

  “Are you willing to be a guinea pig?”

  “Oink.”

  She collapsed with laughter. “Guinea pigs don’t oink, you dope.”

  “No? What do they do?”

  She showed him, and the subject of her immediate future was forgotten.

  “So after your first sex manual is a bestseller, then what?”

  With the blanket wrapped around them, they were sitting facing the fire. “I’ll never write a sex manual.” She jabbed him in the ribs.

  �
��It’s the world’s loss. You’re an expert.” He kissed the end of her nose. “What are you going to write?”

  “Travel tips for an American in Europe? Fiction? I haven’t decided yet. My priority is settling down and carving out my niche in the universe. What about you?”

  “I guess I’ll keep on globe-trotting with my trusty camera.”

  “Oh.”

  It would seem that their goals in life were as opposite as east is from west. Again the subject of their future was left alone. He pulled her onto his lap. They had no future beyond the walls of the tool shed.

  “I’m starved,” he whispered against her ear. They were lying entwined under the blanket. Her legs fit snugly between his. It would be hard to determine which limb belonged to whom. Their arms were wrapped around each other.

  “You’ve got an insatiable appetite.”

  “I know. And I’m always hungry, too.”

  She raised her head and looked down into mischievous green eyes. “Are we talking about the same kind of appetite?”

  “Ohhhhh, you’re talking about food.”

  She swatted him on the bottom and disentangled her arms and legs. “What would you like for breakfast? Smoked oysters or pâté?”

  “Ugh!”

  “How about bread and butter?”

  “That’s better.”

  She took a loaf of bread and the butter out of the picnic hamper beside the door and brought it back to him. He watched lazily as she liberally spread butter on the bread and handed it to him.

  “You aren’t hungry?” he asked when she didn’t fix anything for herself.

  “No. Just remember, if we’re stuck in here for days, that you owe me one ration of bread and butter.”

  While he munched, Jordan toyed with his ears. She rubbed the lobes between her fingers. Then her hands moved down his neck and shoulders, massaging as they went.

  “You do that very well,” he remarked, then took another huge bite of bread.

  Jordan was somewhat piqued that he could accept her evocative ministrations so blithely. Determinedly she allowed her fingertips to lightly brush across his chest. His enthusiastic chewing ceased abruptly. Her smooth oval fingertips found the flat, brown nipples unerringly. He swallowed hard.

  “I don’t suppose you’d want to occupy yourself with some other pastime while I finish my breakfast, would you?” he asked in a low, throaty voice.

  Her lips curved upward in a gamine smile as she shook her head no and moved closer to him. Her hair trailed across his face bewitchingly. She lowered her head and tormented with her flicking tongue what her fingers had brought to hard distension.

  “Jordan—” he gasped. “God, that feels good. How … how did you know to do this?”

  “Instinct,” she breathed against his skin.

  “God bless Mother Nature.”

  He couldn’t say more. Her mouth continued to amuse itself on his chest while her hands slid lower down his torso.

  His breath was trapped in his lungs, longing to burst free. He waited in anguished anticipation until her fingers combed through the dark thatch on his abdomen and beyond. Only then did a soft, almost painful moan escape from his throat. He fell back against the blanket.

  Frugal as they must be with their food, the crust of bread was tossed, forgotten into a corner.

  “Is this—”

  “Heaven?” he interrupted. “Yes, it’s heaven.”

  “Do you like—”

  “Do you have to ask?”

  “I want you to tell me.”

  He opened his eyes and searched her anxious expression. She was still almost virginal, innocent, nervous, wanting to please him. His face softened as he placed his palms on both sides of her face. “Yes, yes. Touch me, Jordan.”

  Her mouth was brutalized by lips that conquered with finesse. Her breasts were attacked by hands whose strength lay in the persuasion of their tender touch. Her nipples were lashed by a rough-soft tongue that was only a harbinger to greedy lips tempered by gentleness.

  By now their bodies were so well acquainted that he knew the instant she was ready to receive him. He plunged into her, deeper, fuller, more certain of his right to be there than ever before. Every part of him, the man he was, the man he aspired to be, concentrated in that mysterious haven that belonged uniquely to Jordan. He felt enriched, emboldened, empowered, and for the first time in his life knew the spiritual heights of loving as well as the physical.

  “I meant what I said that first night,” he said hoarsely in her ear.

  “What?” It wasn’t a word. It was a soft expulsion of breath that only he could understand.

  “It’s never been like this for me, Jordan.” On the last word, the tumult came and he repeated her name in a rhythmic meter. That’s why he couldn’t hear the soft words she chanted into his shoulder. “I love you I love you I love you.”

  “Jordan? Are you awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s getting light outside.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes.” He stirred slightly and arched his head backward. “I can see daylight through the crack under the door.” The woman beside him didn’t move and he resumed his original position with his chin resting on the crown of her head. “The wind isn’t blowing.”

  She sighed heavily but only hugged him tighter. “Do you think the storm is over?” The words were more portentous then either of them wanted to admit.

  “Yes.” He didn’t feel inclined to move either. Half-heartedly he said, “We really should get up and dress.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right.”

  “I don’t want to,” he groaned.

  “I don’t either.”

  They clung to each other tenaciously and kissed with desperate passion. They knew their idyll was over. Someone would come looking for them.

  Helmut.

  They got up and dressed silently, suddenly shy of each other. After hours of immodest, total nakedness, they now averted their heads. Their conversation, when they dared to speak at all, was trite, and so they dropped the embarrassing effort. Everything that could be said had been.

  Reeves opened the door and looked out. The mountain-side was blanketed with snow, but it wasn’t very deep. The sky was still cloudy, but not oppressive. The wind had diminished to a breeze that barely disturbed the clumps of snow in the pine needles on the trees.

  “I think we can make it down once we get a bearing on where we are. We’ll take it slow.”

  “All right,” she answered listlessly. While Reeves banked the fire so it would harmlessly burn itself out, she folded the tarps and stored them where they had been.

  Reeves pulled on his windbreaker and zipped it closed. He insisted that she wrap the blanket around her, though they didn’t think the cold air would be nearly so bad without the howling wind of last evening. When the backpack, the camera case, and the picnic basket were divided as they had been the day before, they left the sanctuary of the shed.

  Jordan took one slow, sweeping glance around the small room, ostensibly to make sure they hadn’t overlooked anything. Actually she wanted to fix it firmly in her mind, to safeguard it forever in her memory. Tears made the snow-covered landscape look watery as she followed Reeves out of the shed. She trekked along behind his lead.

  Cautiously, but easily, they reached the edge of the timberline. Soon after they cleared it, they saw the search party below them snaking up the side of the mountain. There must have been thirty or forty men in mountain-climbing attire fanned out in a long horizontal line on the hillside.

  Reeves stopped and surveyed the sight with a wry grin on his face. “You can tell by the thoroughness of the operation that Helmut’s in charge.”

  Jordan didn’t respond. Instead she shifted his camera case from one arm to the other and followed him as he started down again. What would she tell Helmut? Would he ask about last night? Would he know without asking? Surely if she and Reeves looked at each other the truth about their night together would
reveal itself.

  But the closer they came to the group of men looking for them, the tighter the lines around Reeves’s mouth became. His eyes weren’t shining with a glow of passion as they had done all night. Instead they seemed to reflect the icy patches of snow he skirted around on their careful descent. They were cold.

  Anxiety seared her chest, and it was far more painful than her hard breathing. In some secret part of her heart she had hoped that they might reconcile their ambitions for the future, compromise on what they wanted out of life. The splendor of last night couldn’t be so easily dismissed, could it?

  “They’ve seen us,” said Reeves, tersely breaking into her thoughts. He set down the heavy basket and waved both arms high over his head.

  Jordan saw one of the men respond by enthusiastically waving back. He was wearing a bright red ski jacket and tight black pants tucked into cleated boots. He was unmistakably Helmut. She watched as he turned to excuse most of the men with him, correctly guessing that she and Reeves were safe if they were walking down. Ten or twelve of the men remained with him as he continued to climb.

  “Let’s wait for them,” Reeves suggested, and gratefully set down his load. Jordan did likewise. She folded the blanket into a thick cushion, placed it on a wide, flat rock, and they sat down on it. By the time the snow soaked through it, Helmut would be there.

  The silence that strained between them grew more tense with each moment. Finally Reeves stirred and let his eyes skim her face before flickering away.

  “Jordan, about last night …” He sighed.

  Here it comes, she thought. The gradual letdown. Don’t cause a scene. Be calm. Don’t weep or tear at your hair.

  “I…I never planned for it to happen with us again. After that night of the storm, when I learned you were engaged, I swore I’d leave you alone. But then you said that you weren’t going to marry Helmut… that day on the mountain and then yesterday morning… being stranded and all—”

  “Don’t talk about last night, Reeves. Please.” By an act of will, she prevented the tears that flooded her eyes from overflowing.