For All of Her Life

by Heather Graham

  Of what?

  He couldn’t see her clearly.

  Couldn’t see time.

  Couldn’t see the things in her eyes she was so afraid she might betray...

  Oh, God, it was good...

  She’d known, all of her life, that he was a good lover. So giving. Creating a spiral. Aroused by his partner’s arousal, excited anew, re-creating excitement. She realized these things, soft cries escaping her as he unerringly remembered... a whisper against her earlobe, a stroke down her back. The soft brush of his tongue between her breasts, upon them...the stroke of a finger, lower, higher, lower again. Liquid fire, the trail of his kiss, following where the flurry of touch had come before. She writhed and twisted in his arms, lips pressed to his shoulders, his throat, his chest, fingers entwined in his hair, nails scraping delicately over his flesh. The sensations became blinding. Oh, God, it had never been this good, this sweet, this wonderful, this delicious before.

  It had. It was...

  His hand moved over her buttocks. His stroke—oh, Lord—was inside her. Touching, deeper, finding, evoking...

  His name. Whispered on her lips. Cried out, whispered again. The pleasure so long denied almost an agony. She could find no words. Only his name again. A plea, a demand, a whisper once more. She was suddenly aware of his eyes in the darkness. Then his kiss. Upon her lips. Her throat. Her breast, his tongue raggedly caressing her nipples. Once more, his kiss on her naked flesh, more intimate. He knelt between her parted thighs. Touched, stroked. Dared. More. More and more intimacy. His touch, his kiss, incredible intimacy. A stroke of his finger. Parting her. Liquid warmth. His. Hers. His name on her lips again, a whisper, a hoarse cry, something very near a shriek. A sob.

  Then he was with her. Arms around her, sex within her. The thunder that had been their heartbeats was part of the throbbing that filled her like the heady pulse of a drum, harder, faster, still harder, still faster. Sweat slicked her body, his. Her fingers played into the dampness of his hair while she sought and strained, writhing, closer to him, ever closer, wanting more of him, feeling that she would burst with him, needing, reaching.

  And when the climax burst upon her, it was fantastic. Rising so sweetly, cresting with a burst of liquid magic, shuddering through her with a startling, frightening violence, yet still so unbearably sweet. Wracking the length of her again and again, sweeping her even as she felt him find his own release, his form from head to toe going steel hard, sinking within her in wild, tight thrust, groaning, holding, sinking gently down upon her again, then rolling with her that they might remain as one, yet without her having to take the fullness of his weight upon her.

  Seconds ticked by, then minutes. She hadn’t allowed herself to think, and she didn’t regret that. Yet now thoughts rushed in upon her. What now? A taste of paradise again, memories for the cold, lonely days ahead. A reminder, just in case she had forgotten how much she had once loved her husband, how she’d loved making love with him, lying with him, waking up beside him, laughing, arguing, fighting over the blankets, stealing one another’s pillows.

  In this room.

  She’d walked out because she’d had to. Because she’d lost him already. Because something had lain between them that she hadn’t been able to combat. She’d thought he’d come for her; he’d filed papers against her. Maybe he’d loved her then as she had loved him, despite what lay between them. Despite the bitterness that had inevitably come.

  But now...

  Now he was involved with a thirty-year-old woman. One considered by many to be one of her generation’s great beauties. And that woman would be here. Soon.

  Kathy swallowed hard. She’d told herself she was insane—and she was. She gently tried to extricate herself from him.

  “Please, don’t,” he said. The darkness still blanketed them. His voice was rich and husky and filled with something of the poignancy that seemed to rip at her own heart.

  “What were we thinking?” she asked a little desperately.

  “We weren’t thinking,” he said.

  “My God, what were we doing—”

  “Kathy, we both know what we were doing.”

  “But here, tonight...” Desperation still edged her voice. He was silent for a second, then he sighed.

  “I really don’t want to ruin your life. But I don’t want to give this up. Not for a few minutes, at least. But I guess I do owe it to you to go away. The kids will probably keep Jeremy out fairly late. But will he come here when he returns? He has his own room. Next door. The girls will take him there. If you’re afraid he’ll come here—”

  “He won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’ll—he’ll respect the fact that I told him I was exhausted.”

  “Oh,” Jordan said after a moment. It was clear that he thought any lover worth his salt should be checking on her when he returned from a night out.

  “He’s very courteous that way.”

  “A courteous relationship. Great.”

  “It is!” she said defensively, then added, “People do need their own space, remember? Miss Hughes does keep her own room, right?”

  “Ummm,” he murmured, growing serious. “Kathy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Thanks?”

  “For tonight. Whatever happens...we had this. You didn’t jump up and tell me it was an awful mistake. We had something we used to have. If only for a few moments.”

  “It... wasn’t a mistake,” she whispered. “I did what I did on purpose.”

  Oh, dear Lord, that was true. What a tragic admission. Some things suddenly seemed clear. Among them that she should have had more sex over the years. No matter what she had taught her daughters about the importance of absolutely responsible behavior, she should have had more sex herself.

  If so, she might not have felt so powerless when he had barely touched her.

  “How the hell did we mess it all up so badly?” he asked her softly.

  “Rumors, lies, mistrust.”

  “Why did you leave me?”

  “Because, honest to God, you had left me.

  “It was a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

  “A lifetime, it seems.”

  “A decade is all. But look at us. You’ve got your Mr. Muscleman.”

  “And you have Miss April.”

  He hesitated just briefly. “Yeah, but do you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I have never... been with anyone in this room.”

  She leaned up on an elbow, studying him curiously. “Really?”

  He grinned, delightfully sheepish. Nodded.

  She smiled. “That’s kind of nice.”

  “I’m not saying I haven’t been with a number of women, I have.”

  “I know. If I don’t read the papers, I can always count on a few good friends to fill me in on the details of your life.”

  “Jealous?”

  “Maybe. Just a little bit.”

  “And now tonight—”

  “Was nice,” Kathy said.

  He sat halfway up. “Nice? Nice? Well, my dear, you have just managed to make me feel absolutely ancient. It was supposed to be unbearably exciting. Hot, wild. Not nice. My God, I must be decaying big time!”

  She laughed softly. “I don’t think you need fear anything of the sort. You are dating a sweet young thing who apparently finds you just as hot as a furnace.”

  “And how do you find me?”

  “I find you to be... Jordan,” she said huskily after a moment. She had to be careful! she warned herself. She was starting to sound like something from True Confessions. In fact, despite the darkness, she was beginning to feel uncomfortable.

  Afraid.

  Don’t look at me too closely. Don’t let the magic go, she thought, and tried again to untangle herself from his limbs, his one leg cast over hers, the other caught beneath.

  “Jordan...”

  “Yeah, I guess we should move. What if one of the
girls were to check on you? We wouldn’t want to disappoint either of the children, ummm?”

  “Ummm... right,” she murmured. The sting of tears now seemed to be slamming against her eyelids. She was tired. She could still breathe in the scent of him. She had disentangled—she didn’t want the warm feel of his flesh to go away.

  He started away, then paused. His knuckle touched her chin; his lips brushed hers, melded softly, evocatively to them. Briefly. Too briefly. “It doesn’t seem right to walk away,” he said.

  “It would be damned easy just to fall asleep,” she admitted on a breath.

  His mouth touched hers again.

  But even as her bones began to melt, a strident screeching jangled her nerves and she nearly jumped sky-high.

  “Phone,” he muttered with a curse, starting to reach across her body to pick it up.

  “I’ll get it,” she offered, and slipped the receiver from the sleek telephone on the bedside table.

  “Hello?”

  Silence greeted her at first. She thought perhaps it was Tara Hughes, that she might not appreciate Kathy answering the phone in the house, in Jordan’s room.

  But then she heard the strangest inhalation of breath. Like someone choking, barely able to breathe.

  “Ka...thy!” A chilling voice. “Sweet Kathy, back home again.”

  Jordan snatched the phone from her. “Who the hell is this?” he demanded

  As Kathy watched, his face hardened and aged. She heard the grinding of his teeth.

  “You son-of-a-bitch—” he began; then he cursed and slammed the receiver down. He made a nimble leap over her, staring at the phone base.

  “Jordan, what the hell is going on?”

  He ignored her and jerked open the drawer beneath the phone, pulled out a pen and pad, and jotted down the number displayed in a small box on the phone.

  “Jordan?” Kathy repeated.

  He shook his head, standing, walking around to the foot of the bed to find his robe. Aware that he was about to turn the light on, Kathy made a mad dive for her tailored nightgown, slipping into it even as he reached the wall and hit the switch, flooding them with light.

  “Don’t you worry about this. And excuse me, but I... I’ve got something to take care of,” he told her. “Important.”

  “Jordan, damn it, don’t do this to me, don’t close me out, tell me what’s going on!” she demanded.

  But he was already out the door, closing it behind him.

  Her turn, she determined. She threw the door back open, and followed him. He was already down the stairs. In the living room.

  He was on the phone there, despite the fact that it had to be nearly two A.M.

  “I’ve got a number this time,” he was telling someone tersely. He looked up, saw her. His eyes narrowed angrily. He read out the figures he had written down. “Yes. Fine. Thanks. Let me know.”

  He hung up.

  “Kathy, will you please go up to—”

  “Not on your life,” she said, shaking her head. She crossed her arms over her chest and approached him determinedly. “We gave up Blue Heron. We gave up our marriage. We’ve got new lives. But I’ll be damned if I’ll have any ghosts following me this time when the reunion is over. Jordan, I swear, if you don’t start talking to me, I’ll walk out of this house tonight. What is it?”

  He sank down onto the refurbished Chesterfield sofa. “You can’t do that.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of what might happen.”

  “To whom?”

  He hesitated, then shook his head. “To you.”

  She sank down onto the sofa beside him. “Jordan—”

  “Damn it, Kathryn, you said I didn’t believe you. Well, you didn’t believe me. Believe now. Keith didn’t just die. He wasn’t a tragic rock-suicide; his death was not an accident.”

  “Jordan, damn you, I’m telling you again that I didn’t run to the guest house to see him that night!”

  “I believe you.”

  “Then—”

  “Kathryn, it wasn’t you. It was someone.”

  “But—”

  “That someone killed Keith, Kathryn. And I’m damned afraid that someone may be ready to kill again.”

  Ten

  KATHY STARED AT JORDAN blankly, aware that he was serious. She shook her head, trying to grasp the reason he could be so certain Keith had been murdered.

  “I don’t understand...”

  “Kathy—”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “Think back. You know as well as I do that Keith wasn’t in the least suicidal.”

  “But he did do drugs,” Kathy reminded him painfully. “Jordan, that was the main reason we fought over him all the time.”

  “Yeah, I used to say he’d have to quit or he was out. And you used to tell me that was no way to help someone with a serious problem.”

  “In retrospect, you were probably right. He’d have become a shoe salesman or the like and be alive now.”

  Jordan shook his head, smiling slightly. “Not Keith. He wouldn’t have lived without music.”

  “He might have shaped up. But it doesn’t matter who was right and who was wrong Jordan, the drugs killed him.”

  “The smoke killed him.”

  “He wouldn’t have been out flat while he burned to a cinder if it hadn’t been for the drugs.”

  Jordan nodded, running his fingers through his hair. “Yeah, he took drugs. He came late to practice, he screwed up like crazy. But he never overdosed, he had a talent for getting high, for being out of it without causing serious injury to himself.”

  “Usually. That night he took too much. And he’d been smoking that ridiculous Oriental pipe of his at the same time, the bed caught fire, and he died.”

  “I don’t believe it. I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now. And,” he added quietly, “someone out there knows Keith was murdered. Someone who’s afraid of Blue Heron getting back together, someone who’s afraid of the truth.”

  “You’re saying this because of that phone call?” Kathy queried, more concerned about Jordan at the moment than the possibility that he might be right. This was very strange and frightening. He had closed off from her after Keith’s death. Immediately after the funeral, when everyone had been in shock, they couldn’t have been closer. Perhaps because they’d clung to life. But then they had begun to fight. And she knew he had been suspicious of her; she had really hated him for it, and she still did.

  Amazing, she taunted herself. That hadn’t stopped her from leaping into bed with him just now. She really should have gotten around more over the past decade.

  It would have been no help now, she admitted to herself.

  She’d never before realized just how serious the issue of Keith’s death was with him, that there had been more than the suspicion she might have been closer to Keith than she had ever let Jordan know.

  “I’ve had a number of phone calls,” he told her.

  “Threatening phone calls?”

  “Some. It’s strange. There are two callers. One threatens that someone else might die if Blue Heron comes together. Another says I’m the only one who can make things right.”

  “Pranksters make phone calls. People make phone calls for kicks. Nine hundred numbers are making small fortunes for entrepreneurs aware of the fact that some people get off on things they can say and hear on the phone!”

  He shook his head with exasperation. “Kathy, I don’t know what to do with you, how to knock sense into you!”

  “Jordan, let’s look at this clearly. Ten years ago we had really achieved success. We weren’t a flash in the pan. We had proven ourselves as talented musicians with staying power. We were recognized, we were making money. Too much money, too much fame, maybe. Enough money for Keith to buy whatever drugs he wanted. And we’d been together so long we were like a family, a family of growing children. We had been together too long per
haps; we fought, we squabbled, we grew apart. We wanted different things. We were too close. You and I argued, our friends who wanted different things often used that, used us. Judy and Derrick argued, Miles lusted after Shelley. Shelley, I think, lusted after Keith. Judy wanted to see us all beaten with burning sticks for veering from career and money at any time.” She inhaled and exhaled on a deep breath. “Keith finally took it all a step too far. He lived recklessly, he was a genius, he loved you, he used you, and he did the same with me. Then he died, and we fell apart. It was as if Humpty Dumpty had fallen off his wall. Groups split for lesser reasons. People are involved—personalities, egos. The Beatles split over artistic differences—”

  “And other problems,” Jordan added.

  “Exactly my point. Think about this. We were kids, not even playing ourselves, when Hendrix died. We were discovering how deeply we wanted to be working musicians when Woodstock happened, and remember, Jordan, just about anything went back then. Think about the world since. Vietnam and the peace movement, Afros, and bell-bottoms. The tragedy of Kennedy’s death, the fights that finally gave us the beginnings of desegregation. Free sex, free love—those hideous neon guru jackets we wore at one time. What I’m trying to say is, we were a product of our time. Drugs were in before drugs were out. We fought for good things sometimes while doing bad.”

  “Kathryn, I’m actually enjoying this. You’ve always been so passionate in your beliefs and ideas, and you haven’t changed a bit, but I admit I am completely lost.”