He rose to pull her jeans free, and his breath caught at the sight of her nearly naked form sprawled upon his bed. One of her arms was lightly draped across her forehead, hiding her eyes from him. Her breasts were lustrous with his own moisture and splendid in their shape and form, large and round, spilling to the sides as if demanding his hands be there to cup them upward.
Her body tapered sharply to a narrow waist and flared again almost immediately, winging out to full, curved hips. Her smooth stomach dipped to a gentle valley at her navel and rose again to curve to her mound.
She was glorious. “You are beauty personified,” he murmured, running his hands from her collarbone, over her breasts and the soft soft skin at her navel and down to her jeans.
He pulled her pants free, uncertain for the first time since they’d come into the house, afraid of hurting her injured leg. As he removed her shoes and pulled the jeans off, he studied her legs, searching for signs of her injury.
There was no need for intense scrutiny; the scars were readily visible, barely healed scars neatly crisscrossing her right upper thigh, dominantly displayed and vivid as a fearful reminder of her recent accident. And behind them, faint and less perfectly straight, were other scars, reminders of that accident long ago that claimed her cousin’s life and nearly stole hers.
For a moment, he wanted to say something, to ask about them, then he slowly leaned forward and pressed a light, very gentle kiss to them. Old and new.
She shivered beneath his nearly intangible touch, then sighed and raised a hand to his face to stroke it equally delicately, as if memorizing the planes of his features.
“I have a new pin in the leg. It really doesn’t hurt anymore. It just takes some time to get the hang of it,” she murmured. She hadn’t said a pin. She’d said a new pin. Had he known she’d received one back when Susie was killed? If he had, he’d driven it from his memory.
He shifted his lips to the velvet-soft skin just above her panties and traced the outline of her last remaining article of clothing with his tongue. She squirmed and parted her legs a little when he reached her thighs.
“Chas...” she murmured, perhaps in warning, maybe in supplication.
Her hands plucked at his sweater trying to free him of it, and he yanked the cotton cable knit from him, tossing it somewhere far beyond the bed. He heard his own swift hiss of intaken air as she laid her cool hands flat against his shoulders and kneaded softly, learning him, exploring his muscles, his bare skin.
Within seconds, her hands seemed supple fire, hot and light, delicate and sure, igniting every inch of his exposed chest and back with flames of molten need.
He could hear her slightly hitched breathing, as if her breath were catching in a throat too constricted to allow easy intake. He knew exactly how she felt; his own breath was ragged and harsh with the severe controls he was placing on himself to take his time, to wile away hers.
When her fingers tugged at the belt of his jeans, he rolled from her to yank them free. She helped him then by slowly pushing his briefs down over his buttocks, sliding her hands along the planes of his back, his cheeks and around to encircle him with her hands, cupping him, drawing him back to her.
He closed his eyes in sudden, sharp pain—not that she was hurting him in the slightest, but with the strongest need he’d ever felt before in his life. As her hand slowly rose and achingly slowly lowered along his shaft, every fiber in his being warred with the need to just turn and sink into her.
But the time for words had arrived. “Allison...” he all but croaked, stilling her wickedly sweet hands. “Let me get something,” he said brokenly.
Though her hands were already immobile beneath his, he felt her still even further, the way an animal might stiffen in fear or wariness.
“I can’t have any more children,” she said softly.
Chas didn’t move, either, shocked into utter paralysis at her words, his hands resting upon hers which were yet holding him. She hadn’t said she couldn’t have children. She’d said any more children.
A thousand questions trembled on his lips, hovered there, ready to spill free, but he checked them, having more restraint now than he had in the clinic earlier. There would be time for questions later, when the day wound to a close, when Christmas was over and the presents long opened.
“And you?” asked his matter-of-fact reporter love. He could hear the smile in her voice.
He grinned a little in response, felt some of the tension slipping from his body and felt her hands shifting beneath his, gripping him with greater strength and renewed purpose.
He could tell her now, let her know the truth about Billy, about himself. But that, too, would be to talk of the past, to bring up old hurts and pains, to try to explain away fifteen years of longing. And of bitter desire.
“No one since Thelma.”
Her hands wriggled beneath his, and she hitched them slightly to unfetter her movements. He was somewhat surprised to discover that not a whit of his desire had ebbed in the slightest. In fact, in some strange way the total freedom of their conversation, short and tense and utterly confusing as it had been, made him all the harder, all the stronger beneath her sure touch.
“Chats...”
“Mmm?”
“Won’t you ever turn around?”
If she’d asked him to leap from a tall building at that moment, he would have. And clear the one beside it.
He swung around and pinned her arms above her, holding her firmly to the bed. He chuckled a little as she rose to meet his kiss with full alacrity. Holding her with one hand, he used his other to edge her panties from her, careful of her scars, anxious to be rid of the silk once it cleared the marks on her leg.
“Around enough?” he asked, smiling down at her.
“Oh, yes,” she said simply, smiling back.
Keeping her hands beneath one of his, he reveled in the feel of her strong grip around his hands, more holding him there than he was her. He nuzzled her uplifted breasts and slipped his free hand between her thighs to tickle her legs apart.
“You don’t have to hold me,” she said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“No dice,” tie said. “I’m not taking any chances.”
She chuckled, and her breasts jounced against his face making his smile broaden and his fingers at her apex dip to stroke her.
She arched upward and drew in her breath sharply. And he lowered his mouth to her flattened stomach and flicked his tongue across her sensitive navel. She writhed beneath him, whispering his name.
As his fingers found her liquid opening and slipped inside her, she bucked up to meet him, her breath drawing raggedly, her body luminescent with passion, dewy with want.
Reluctantly he released her hands, but he was far more avid in his quest to taste her, to bury himself in her. To his delight, she didn’t try stopping him and parted her legs still farther to allow him access. An invitation he accepted with all his heart.
Can’t have any more children. The words reverberated in his head like a refrain, like a discordant melody line to the harmony he felt with her. But as he brushed her crisp curls to the side and flicked his tongue across her, making her leap to his lips, he found he could think of nothing else in the world but tasting her, making her writhe, making her beg for him to join her, to join with her, to sink himself and drown in her.
Allison didn’t know when he had released her hands. Minutes ago? Seconds ago? Or had they been free all along? She knew nothing but pure sensation, his hot breath against her apex, his delicate, sure tongue tasting her so intimately, his fingers gliding in to tease, only to withdraw again, tantalizing her still further.
“Please...” she murmured, or was it a whimper, so strong was her desire to have him fill her. “Chas...oh, please.”
But he remained deaf to her entreaties, moving faster against her, in her until the universe began to quiver and flatten. She felt everything in her still in utter concentration and total abandonment. The eye of a hurrica
ne, the core of a tornado. Then the universe imploded as spasm after spasm racked her body, seemingly sending it into a thousand pieces.
Chas had stilled also, waiting for her, ready to catch her and bring her back down, holding on to her firmly as if wholly aware of her momentary disappearance. He slowly withdrew his fingers from her, and she cried out a little as he did so, aching for the feel of him even still.
But when he raised his head and she saw his eyes, heavy lidded with want, his face nearly rigid with fierce petition, she opened her arms and called him to her, hungrier now for the feel of his full length inside her than she had been even seconds before.
He poised above her for a moment, as if gauging the extent of her acceptance.
“Please, Chas,” she said again, hoarsely, her voice raw with all new and even more heightened desire.
“Allison,” he said. Naming her, perhaps claiming her, as he slowly, deliberately slid into her until buried deep inside her. “Oh, my lovely...lovely Allison.”
His eyes were tightly closed and his jawline rigid, as if in great pain. She knew how he felt, for nothing in her life had ever prepared her for the exquisiteness of feeling him so deeply held within her.
She closed her legs around his back, holding him securely to her, and wrapped her arms beneath his to bring his weight down upon her, needing to feel the solidity of his body pressed to hers, flesh to bared flesh.
Tucking his arms beneath her shoulder blades, he grasped her shoulders with his broad hands, holding her tightly, rocking her downward to meet him as he slowly began thrusting into her.
“Ah-h-h,” she cried at the same time as he groaned aloud and buried his face in the hollow of her neck as his body slowly, surely melded into hers, the most primal of meetings, the most glorious of unions.
One now, they parted slightly only to meet again, over and over, faster and faster. Harder still, he drove against her, and she rose to draw him even deeper, clinging to him, reveling in every thrust, each driving push of his rock-hard body, his rippling muscles and his single-minded want.
She felt herself clenching around him, her own focus growing narrower, tighter as she spiraled closer to a second fragmenting of the universe.
She had loved him so, once upon a time. Feeling him inside her again, loving his body, loving the way he made her feel, she tried shutting her mind to all but the sensations he roused in her. But tears of joy, of memory, of extreme desire, sprang to her eyes nonetheless.
His breathing changed, became erratic and labored. His heart thundered against her breasts. His fingers dug into her shoulders, and he growled her name over and over as he plunged into her.
She gripped him as tightly as she possibly could, feeling she were riding a storm, being swept away by one. The room faded; the world faded. Sharp spikes of light shattered her vision, and she felt herself tightening, another implosion ready to rip through her.
And suddenly he went perfectly still. He cried out her name, arching against her as he held her fiercely to his chest, thrusting his head back, loosing a groan of such intensity that she felt it ripple through his back.
And then she felt him inside her, hot and sharp, not spilling so much as erupting into her, and the intensity of her own triggered spasms caught her unaware, flinging her senseless. She would have been wholly lost if he had not held her to him so tightly, so lovingly.
It seemed to her that hours, perhaps days, passed before his rigid form began to relax. He shuddered and pressed hard, utterly possessive kisses to her jawline, her shoulders, her lips.
He shifted as if to pull free from her, but she tightened her legs, locking him in, refusing to let the moment end. He sighed and released his strong grip on one shoulder to lightly brush her dampened hair from her forehead. He trailed his fingers down her face and gently, tenderly kissed her.
She heard the record player change another record. She hadn’t been able to hear the music for who knew how long. As the first song began to play, Kenny Rogers singing in his distinct voice, she began to chuckle.
Above her, Chas grinned down at her. “What’s funny?” he asked, relaxed and oh, so very warm over her.
“The song,” she said, and chuckled anew as he cocked his head to listen to the chorus of “Come, All Ye Faithful.”
He began to laugh, too, his body rippling against hers. He rolled them over in a swift motion, cradling her above him, holding her close, still within her, but all intensity spent.
Still chuckling a little, he gazed up at her. “Merry Christmas, Allison.”
She laid her head down against his broad chest, nestled into his arms, cherishing the slow, rhythmic caresses of his hands on her back, the steady rise and fall of his chest, the lulling beat of his heart, listening to the music, knowing that this perfect day would have to end, that the troubles that waited for her hadn’t disappeared, that danger still lurked in the shadows, that the past remained unresolved, unfinished, unburied.
But as the record paused and Kenny Rogers began singing his version of “Oh, Holy Night,” she prayed that the morrow would wait, that this day would last forever.
A futile dream, an impossible one. But she wished it nonetheless.
“Shh,” Chas whispered, as if he’d been reading her mind. “We’re here now. That’s all that counts.”
Oh, if only that were true, she thought.
Chapter 10
Chas busied himself in the kitchen, assembling a Christmas platter of taste treats, leftovers he’d carefully kept in the freezer. He’d had no inkling then to what use he would put the roast turkey, the various cookies and candies, the unusual pastry hors d’oeuvres.
As a widower in a town the size of Almost, he seldom had to actually carve out a meal on his own. Invariably Sammie Jo, Martha, Mickey Peterson or Alva Lu Harrigan would happen to prepare just enough extra to feed he and Billy. And in an area devoted to the growing of food and the raising of cattle, sheep and pigs, he had a freezer literally brimming full of the choicest meats, which had contributed to his turning into a pretty handy guy to have around a barbecue grill.
Sammie Jo had once told him to stop feeling guilty about the largesse offered him. “You’re the only doctor we have for better than fifty miles, Charles, and if we want to repay you some way or another, it’s not for you to argue or go around feeling guilty about it.”
“I’m a vet,” he’d said.
“Really? And who got up at three in the morning last week to fix up Homer Chalmers when he pitched down those ridiculous steps of his?”
“I only put a bandage on his head,” he’d said.
“That and twenty-one stitches all sewed neater than Alva Lu coulda set them. ‘Sides, you don’t have anybody to fend for you.”
He’d shrugged then, accepting all the favors and gifts, knowing it made his life easier in a thousand different ways. And now, sliding the large platter into the microwave and setting the timer, he was glad he’d given in.
Now assembling a dessert plate with bits of fudge, divinity, toffee bars and other delectables contributed by half the town, he wondered who “fended” for Allison in New York. And suspected she had no one.
The microwave dinged, and he pulled the platter of turkey slices, mashed potatoes and giblet gravy, candied yams and the traditional green-bean-and-mushroom soup with onion-ring casserole from the large oven, while tossing the reheated homemade buns like a juggler to keep from burning his fingers.
In not having to fend for himself, he’d learned the secret of masterful preparation; he added a couple of fluffy sprigs of fresh parsley and a light sprinkle of freshly ground pepper to the whole plate.
He kissed his fingers and tossed the kiss to the air. “And voila! Ze vet becomes ze amazing master chef.” He turned to find Allison grinning at him from the doorway to his kitchen.
The effect of seeing her in the doorway, dressed in nothing more than one of his shirts, sleeves rolled to the elbows, shirttail hanging nearly to her knees, her hair tousled, her face flushed
with the heat from his fireplace and her smile nearly blinding in intensity, was a purely visceral one.
He felt as if someone had seized hold of his heart and squeezed tightly.
She had. Allison.
“I didn’t know you were there,” he said, purely from reflex. He wanted to toss the carefully arranged platter to the floor and drag her back into his arms.
“So, master chef, what have you whipped up for us? I’m starving.” She walked seductively toward him, perhaps not intending the seduction, but managing all too effectively nonetheless.
Her eyes widened when she took in the array of foodstuffs. Then they softened as she looked back up at him. “A real Christmas dinner?”
“With all the trimmings,” he said through a tight throat.
“I think I’d better take that,” she said, and removed the platter from his outstretched hand.
She set the plate on the island bar and popped a finger in her mouth to erase a dab of gravy that had spilled to the side. She gave him a swift glance that cut right through him.
“If you want to eat—” he began, only to have the words wither and die in his throat as she deliberately dipped a finger into the gravy pooled in the center of the potatoes and came sassily, saucily toward him, single finger outstretched.
“You’re playing with fire,” he said hoarsely, capturing that finger with his lips and her pliant body with his hands, pulling her to him.
She laughed and arched back in his hands, trusting him not to let her fall. Her entire being radiated enchantment. He remembered how she’d laughed so long ago, just in this carefree, unfettered way, secure in herself, her attractiveness, her beauty, in those days when she had been secure in her love for him, his for her.
He was aware that she’d deliberately set aside the past and her troubled present, that she’d shoved them to some dark corner of her mind.
Gone were the shadows beneath her eyes, erased as magically as the gravy had disappeared from her fingertip. God knew there was so much to talk about, so much to figure out, but standing there, holding her from falling, loving her so much it ached, he could only continue with the pretense that one day out of time could matter, that their one day together would heal all wounds, large or small.
Almost Remembered Page 14
