SUMMERS FREEDOM

by Ruth Wind

  He dipped to kiss her as he took the first stair. "I'm not taking any chances." He grinned, his dimples showing deeply. "I've always wanted to do this. Don't deprive me."

  His voice rumbled through his chest and into her body, and Maggie laughed at the sheer delight of being carried—actually carried—by a man.

  He made his way down the hall to the twin of her own bedroom. The room was dark with rain and evening. Just beyond the threshold, he paused, still cradling her, to press his lips to hers. "You can't imagine how many times I've heard you moving next door and wanted to tear the wall down." He moved to the small alcove off the bedroom and settled her upon a mattress covered with a thick quilt and an assortment of oversize pillows. The cool scent of rain wafted in through an open window.

  Maggie knelt and drew Joel down to face her. She opened her palms to spread her fingers upon his face. "You weren't alone," she breathed, tasting his sculpted mouth once more, "in wanting to tear down the wall." With bold but unhurried movements, she ran her tongue over the unfamiliar corners of his lips, letting it dart toward his teeth and the thrust of his tongue. His was a flavor unlike any she'd ever known, not sweet or salty. He tasted of himself, like a summer sky, like a bird in flight.

  His hands moved from her hips up over her ribs with agonizing slowness, until they nearly covered her from the lower swell of her breasts to her shoulders. "I'm sorry about this week," he murmured, tasting the flesh of her neck. "I must have been crazy to think—"

  "Shh," Maggie whispered. "It doesn't matter now."

  "You're beautiful, Maggie," he breathed, letting his fingers slide down over the hard tips of her breasts. There he paused to play a light tattoo that sent a quickening through her belly. She moaned softly.

  Without hurry, he released each of the buttons on her shirt until it lay unfastened but closed over her.

  "I've waited so long for this," he whispered, and at the heat in his eyes, Maggie felt a surge of power, the ancient power women have felt over their men for time immemorial. She waited.

  He stretched out his fingers to slide the fabric aside, off her breasts, and for a long, endless time, simply moved his hands over the bared flesh. "Ah," he breathed at last, bending over her, "you are a sight to behold."

  Gathering a supple breast into each hand, his tongue reached out to flitter over one, then the other, the moist touch no more than the errant tap of a moth's wing. The rasp of his skin grated the tender flesh as his head moved with his languid supping. She arched at the exquisite sensation.

  Still Joel teased, curling his tongue around each gentle slope and rise, moving up to taste the hollow of her throat before slipping down once more.

  All at once, he sucked one nipple into his mouth to roll it between his lips, and Maggie cried out, grasping his head between her breasts. He refused to let go, teasing and tasting and nibbling until Maggie thought she would explode.

  A low, satisfied half laugh rumbled in his chest, and with a surge of joy, Maggie understood that he could play while they made love. It needn't be a rushed or serious thing—the night, at last, belonged to them.

  "My turn," she murmured in his moment of laughter. She pushed him onto his back, flung her shirt away, and throwing her hair out of her eyes with a wicked grin, straddled him.

  Until that moment, Joel had managed to maintain a semblance of control—he wanted to learn the terrain of her slowly, to savor every inch of her. As she knelt over him, her breasts free and glistening, her hair tumbling like tawny velvet around her naked shoulders, he felt his control snap.

  She leaned down and took his lips, tasting him the way he'd tasted her. "Too bad," she teased, "that you aren't wearing buttons I could tear off."

  "Allow me," he said, half sitting to twist his shirt off in one quick motion, then falling back to the bed. He reached to touch her again, reveling in the contrast of his work-roughened hands against her pliant breasts. Her hips moved alluringly over his, her hair brushed his cheek and her nipples burned with hard heat into his palms.

  Her fingers traced his shoulders and chest, and as they moved, Joel felt her mood shift. Her voice was breathless, constricted when she spoke. "Joel," she said, bending to press her lips to the places her fingers had learned, "you're so incredible I can hardly believe you're real."

  "I'm real," he assured her, gathering her to him. "You're the wraith. You've bewitched me."

  He laid her gently upon the quilt and stripped away her jeans and underwear, then shed his own. When he would have stretched next to her, Maggie knelt and urgently held him away, unable to resist admiring him in the rain-dimmed light. In reverence, she let her hands rove over the tight curve of his shoulders, trace the wide triangle of black hair on his chest, revel in the might and breadth of his rib cage. With her mouth, she tasted the curve of his bicep.

  At last, she swayed forward to let her unclothed body brush his, feeling an overwhelming swell of delight at the long-sought press of him against her. His breath rasped against her shoulder, her breasts met his magnificent chest—and Maggie sighed. The sweetness was so acute, she could have knelt that way with him for the rest of her life, reveling in the joy of the simple contact of their bodies.

  But Joel was not so content. His hands roamed her, traveling over thighs and belly and neck, as if he wanted to memorize the feel of her. And as his hands and lips roved and teased and explored, Maggie knew that she, too, must find release in his arms. The thought gave her a brief moment of terror, and as his gentle fingers approached the, deep center of her womanhood, his hands nudging her thighs apart, she froze.

  "There's a tiger waiting in your eyes, love," he whispered. "Let me unleash it." His voice rumbled almost below register. "I won't hurt you."

  The ministrations he offered were too gentle to resist. Maggie let go, gave herself to Joel, to the man who'd captured her like a kite on a string. And like the kite, he held her loosely while she gained altitude, reined her in when she would have plunged, fed her more line to let her soar until she felt herself hovering high above the earth, connected only by the touch of his hand to anything remotely real. She cried his name, begging him to come to her.

  And at last, he plunged with her, in her, with restraint and power. As he thrust, Maggie felt herself soar through a bank of clouds into a burst of golden light, blinding and utterly dazzling. She arched and gasped, riding the currents of Joel until she knew he, too, had met the sky. His mouth closed upon hers, and the light grew and exploded.

  They drifted slowly back to earth together. Maggie opened her eyes to find his fixed upon her face, his sorrow gone. In its place glowed a transcendent beauty, the same gloriously beautiful light Maggie had seen upon his face the day he'd spoken of the red-tailed hawk that had begun his career. This time, she dared to reach for him, letting her fingers worship his magnificent face.

  Making a warm, purring sound, she sighed. "Well, Tarzan, I think you found your tiger."

  With gentle hands, he cupped her face. "I knew you were in there." Joel felt a tenderness and joy greater than any he'd ever known. And with a touch of fear, he knew the joining had gone deeper than either of them could yet guess.

  He wrapped her close to him, touching her body with as much of himself as he possibly could, and they dozed gently together, awaking to love and rest, love and rest all through the night.

  At one point as they lay curled in the quilt, listening to the rain fall against the trees beyond the windows, Joel stroked Maggie's hair. She leaned into his chest, content to listen to the deep thudding of his heart below her ear. "Are you sure this was okay?" he asked softly.

  "I am now." She cast around for a way to express herself. "That wasn't like anything that ever happened to me before."

  "Me, either."

  "Really?" She scanned his face for truth, feeling exposed and vulnerable in a way that was uncomfortable. "You don't have to say that. I mean, maybe I just don't know a lot about this. I've only…"

  He grinned. "You've only what?"

>   "Nothing."

  "You've only had one lover—maybe two?"

  "One," she corrected. "I guess that makes me seem a little backward."

  "Then we both are—me even more than you." He chuckled. "Being a man and all."

  Maggie couldn't disguise her astonishment. "Your wife was your only lover?"

  He half shrugged. "We met when I was fourteen. Not much time for anyone else."

  She twisted her mouth. "I wonder why men think they have to be Casanovas? I hate that double standard, and I hate it both ways. If it's okay for a woman to make choices, it's okay for a man to have the same ones."

  Joel slid a hand with ease over the sleek, tawny skin of her shoulder.

  "Still," she said, smiling, "I'm proud and honored."

  "And well you should be," he teased, dipping to kiss her. They returned with laughter into the cushion of the mattress, curling there until the night faded.

  Morning found them both starved, and they carried coffee and bagels with cream cheese and jam outside to the picnic table in the backyard. Overhead, in merry celebration, a sparrow sang, flitting from branch to branch as a squirrel shook the best twigs. "Tell me about your wife, Joel," Maggie invited.

  For an instant, Joel's eyes went cold. Then he lifted his cup, sipped the hot coffee carefully and put it down. "What do you want to know?"

  Maggie shook her head. "I don't know. Was she pretty?"

  "Like a rose—very lush and velvety at first." He swallowed, as if the memory gave him pain. "Her hard living showed pretty fast, though. All the velvet wore off."

  "How long ago did you divorce?"

  "Seven years."

  "And you stayed celibate all that time?" Maggie burst out.

  Joel lifted his eyebrows with a sultry grin. "I was waiting for you."

  It was hard to tell if the words were meant to throw her off her subject or if he really meant them. Maggie glanced at her plate with a little laugh.

  He took her hand. "Look at me, Maggie."

  She complied. At the brilliance of the jeweled eyes, so bright in his dark face, she nearly bolted again, terrified at the emotions he called up in her.

  "What happened to me with Nina was a long time ago," he said. "But there are long-range repercussions that I'm not ready to discuss yet." The entreaty and sorrow had returned, and Maggie hated herself for putting it back when it had receded. He kissed her fingers. "I will tell you. I promise."

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm being nosy again."

  "No," he replied firmly. "You're honest—and I'm afraid I'm not." He let her hand go with a sigh and stood up. "Ah, hell," he said, turning away.

  Maggie jumped up with a suddenly urgent need to still him. "No." She pressed her lips to his. "I don't want to know, not ever. It can be yours."

  He uttered an oath and clasped her to him. Lifting his head, he took her face into his hands. He kissed her. "I mean it when I say I've waited for you a long time." A bittersweet smile touched his eyes. "Just think, if we'd met fifteen years ago, we'd both have saved a divorce."

  "But I'd have missed Samantha."

  He nodded his agreement and wrapped his arms around her, closing his eyes. As she returned the hug, he sent out a silent prayer. Please, God, just give us a little time.

  Whatever she said about keeping his secret to himself, he knew the fabric of his untruth would come unraveled, leaving him exposed. But for the first time, he wondered if there might be a gentler way of showing her, a way to ease from lies to truth without shattering this new and vulnerable beauty enveloping them.

  He would show her, carefully and slowly, who he was. Lifting his head, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Would you like to see my birds?"

  Maggie had seen Joel in many attractive modes—riding his bike, thighs pumping with power; laughing and teasing as the moon rose over Colorado Springs; standing proud and naked before her last night, as perfect as Michelangelo's David. As she watched him work a falcon in the warm afternoon, however, all other visions paled.

  As he worked Maggie could imagine him performing the same act in centuries long past. In her mind's eye, she saw the dark chestnut hair grown to the shoulders of a heavy leather vest, his stout, strong thighs encased in well-woven linen. His realm would have been thick forests; his power born of the deep link between himself and his fierce birds.

  The vivid thought exhilarated her, sent her heart soaring for the heavens once more, without even touching him. Oh, Lord, she thought, I've gone and done it. Fallen head over heels, passionately in love.

  The thought left her anxious for one long moment. Her parents had been ruined by passionate love, and it had already cast a pall over Joel's life.

  But nothing this radiant, this powerful, could be wrong. When Joel motioned her to join him, she went eagerly, honored to share with him whatever portions of his life he could show her.

  The falcon itself was a surprise, for she'd expected, somehow, an evil bird, huge and fierce. To the contrary, the prairie falcon was not much larger than a raven. Its face, wreathed in black, brown and cream feathers, was small and sweet, with enormous dark eyes that gave it a childlike expression. When Joel donned a leather glove, she noticed the long, sharp talons and hooked beak and realized its soft appearance cloaked powerful shoulders and wings tailored for incredible speed.

  It was midway through recovery, Joel explained. A wildlife officer had found him in a sinkhole, and though the injuries couldn't really be explained, the bird had wrenched enough muscles and torn enough flesh to have been incapacitated for several months.

  Like his medieval counterpart, Joel restrained the bird with a leather thong. For a time, it seemed content to ride on Joel's arm, eyes darting around the field with alert interest. With some nudging, it flew a little here and there, once making a swooping dance through the air to snag a mouse, which it promptly deposited at Joel's feet.

  Joel grinned at the bird. "Thank you." With a complete lack of revulsion, he bent to snatch the mouse up by the tail, tossing it into the air. "You may have it."

  The falcon swooped and snatched the carcass out of thin air, landing on the ground to devour the meal. Maggie turned away. "Sorry," she said, "but yuck."

  "It's a good sign for this guy," Joel commented. "He's getting much stronger." He smiled at her. "We've had some great luck in the past month—I think the birds want to get out while there's plenty of youthful prey."

  Maggie made a face. At Joel's tolerant, teasing smile, she defended herself. "I can't help it. Seems violent."

  "They never kill except to eat or in defense of their young." His eyes darted out to the horizon. "Unlike man."

  She nodded, thinking suddenly of her father, a professional soldier. She'd always considered him hawkish. Now, with a strange clarity she saw that his only flaw—though it had been a terrible one—had been his inability to draw distinctions between the laws of war and the laws of home.

  Disturbed, she sighed. Lately, she wasn't sure what she thought about anything anymore.

  Next to her, Joel laughed at the falcon, the sound rich and deep. In the sunlight his thick hair shone with ebony and chestnut and his eyes glittered with good cheer. He had upset her life, and yet, he was the one thing she was sure of. The paradox of it made her smile. "I'm hungry enough to eat that mouse myself," she said, touching his arm. "How about heading for the store sometime soon?"

  Joel grinned, a sultry edge to his full lips. "By all means," he said, his gaze dropping to her mouth. His voice deepened. "I'll feed you whatever you like."

  Maggie reached out to playfully run her hand over his thigh.

  "Maybe," he murmured, "we ought to forget about eating and move directly to dessert."

  She laughed and danced away from him. "You'd better concentrate on getting that bird home."

  Handicapped by the bird on the jess, Joel couldn't follow his instincts, which dictated that he take her here in this deserted field with all the hurry and power he'd controlled last night. But he promised himself,
as he took Maggie in with a glance, that he wouldn't put it off for more than an instant past his obligation.

  * * *

  Chapter 10

  « ^ »

  Spring deepened into a mountain summer as the days of June passed swiftly. Maggie watched the lilacs fade for another year and roses take their place. Joel's garden of seedlings grew into sturdy plants in neat rows. The kitten that Moses had brought home was released from the prison of his cast and spent his days frolicking through the long grass in the backyard.

  Like the season, Maggie felt herself ripen and bloom under the spell of her love for Joel. He, too, seemed to thrive. Gone were the shadows in his eyes—he laughed and teased with Maggie, playing practical jokes with a vengeance. Once it was a rubber spider, hung on a slender thread from the sun visor in her car—a joke that sent Maggie screaming when she climbed into the car one morning. Through the open door of his apartment, she heard Joel's booming laugh.

  Another time, he borrowed David's leather and silver jacket, scrounged up a motorcycle from somewhere and took her cruising the main drags on Saturday night.

  In return, Maggie cooked, astonishing herself with imaginative creations full of color and balance, which Joel consumed with a vigor that pleased her beyond all reckoning.

  Although she would have been perfectly content in the first flush of love to let go of everything in the world unconnected to Joel, she did have to work. One morning, as Sharon and Maggie collaborated on the upcoming issue, Sharon said, "Are you actually humming?"

  Maggie paused and flashed her friend a grin. "Guess I am."

  "Mmm-hmm." Sharon shook her head. "He give you a class ring or anything yet?"

  "A rubber spider," Maggie laughed, "and a six-pack of bubble gum. Do those count?"

  Sharon grinned appreciatively. "I'm jealous."

  "Maybe I'll keep my eyes peeled on your behalf."

  "You know better than to try matchmaking, Maggie."

  "Oh, I know." She grinned. "You should go out with my brother when he comes. You seemed to have hit it off the last time he was here. He's supposed to be in town any time now."