“It’s real.” I show him the Google map.
A smile lights up his heavenly features.
“I knew it!” he says. “I knew I’m not a lost cause.”
“There are no pictures of it on Google. Maybe it’s too small.”
“Don’t you see, Jean? I do belong someplace.”
“I never doubted it. You just have to give these things time. Tonight, you’ll probably remember something else. The memories snowballs, and then they will be an avalanche.”
He nods, beaming.
“Kansas isn’t too far from here. I can drive you there tomorrow. It only takes eleven hours or so to get to the Kansas border . . . after we get you checked out at the hospital, of course.”
He makes as if to protest, but it’s too good an offer to say no to. So he enthusiastically nods again.
“Jean?” His beautiful eyes are shining. He reaches out and clasps my hands. “Thank you.”
“It’s no big deal.”
His hands are large and warm. For the first time, I feel the calluses on them, as though he is a working man, well used to physical labor. But every part of him doesn’t compute. He has the face of an angel and the body of a god, and yet he does manual labor? I recall the way he stacked the branches earlier today. The calluses couldn’t have come from that, surely?
The air is still between us as our eyes lock. I’ll be the first to admit I’m no great beauty. I’m reasonably attractive, yes – with my clear brown eyes and upturned nose. Kenneth was attracted to me because he thought me ‘cute’. I have a sprinkling of freckles around my nose that won’t go away no matter how hard I dab anti-freckle cream on it. My hair is a reddish blonde and possibly my best feature. But I’m no Aphrodite and I never have been.
Still, Don never takes his gaze off me as if I’m the most mesmerizing woman in the world. Then I realize it. I’m the only woman in the world for him. He has no one to turn to, no home to call his own. It’s only natural that he –
His lips move towards mine before I can say anything.
I know. I’m just as shocked as anyone.
He locks me in a kiss that makes every part of me – not just my toes – want to curl. His lips are moist and soft and so insistent in the way they engage mine. There are a hundred nuances in those lips. A thousand. They move and undulate in a way that leaves me breathless. A quiver of longing shoots through my body, culminating in a flower of need in my loins.
Kenneth has never made me feel this way.
I swear no man has.
My hands can’t help but creep around his neck. Oh, his neck. The cords of muscle stand out, and the soft tendrils of his hair at the back brush my trembling fingers. We’re both sitting down upon the bed – he with his legs up, and my body at an angle to his. He smells of . . . oh, I don’t know. Man musk and tap water and everything fresh.
I feel his arms go around me to clasp the small of my back. I part my lips a little, and his tongue tentatively darts in. He licks my lower lip – a long, sensuous flicker that promises so much more. His lips close in on my mouth again as his palms rub my lower back.
I suddenly want more. Much, much more.
He presses my body closer to his so that my breasts – rolling in their brassiere cups – are crushed against his chest. His body heat melts into mine so that we’re one continuous ebb and flow. His tongue is now in my mouth – warm, clever and moist. He entwines my own appendage with it in an erotically-charged gesture that has my knees go weak.
His hand reaches for the neckline of my blouse. Then it stops. His lips freeze against mine.
I’m already aroused to fever pitch, and I barely register this sudden cessation of activity until moments later. His lips part from mine and I’m left hanging, my mouth still open. His flushed face pulls away. His eyes refuse to meet mine.
My blouse is askew and my skin still tingling from his touch.
I can only manage a whisper, “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry, Jean,” he mumbles. “I can’t do this.”
“But why?”
His perfect features are stricken. “I just thought of something. What if I’m not . . . free? What if I have someone waiting for me out there?”
He lets the possibility trail.
Yes, of course. He’s making perfect sense. He might be attached . . . or even married. He might have a family of two kids. Everything about him screams ‘single Greek god’ and not ‘father’, but with my damned luck, you just never know.
I feel like a ledge beneath my feet has just crumbled into a yawning abyss.
“I’m sorry, Jean, I didn’t mean to kiss you.”
That just makes it worse. Yes, what he says is rational, but somewhere in the cobwebs of my brain, a little nagging voice from a tiny image with red devil wings says ‘It’s because you’re not pretty enough. You’re not good enough. You never will be’.
With a sinking feeling, I know that the voice is right. Kenneth saw through me and rejected me. Now this gorgeous, beautiful man who has me as his only lifeline sees through me as well. Well, technically, he doesn’t even have to see through me. He just has to look at me, and know that I’ll never be good enough for the likes of him.
“It’s OK,” I mumble. “I’m sorry to have kissed you back.”
“I wish it weren’t so,” he says anxiously.
“Yeah.”
I rise from the bed. My limbs are like lead weights. I notice that the front of his jeans has tented again.
He notices me noticing this, and blushes.
“I’m sorry,” he says again.
I swear that if I hear those two little words one more time, I’ll scream.
I lift my head up high and say as calmly as I can. “Goodnight, Don.”
“Goodnight, Jean.” He pulls the coverlet across his legs to cover his erection. His expression is bruised, pleading.
I walk quickly out of the guestroom lest I embarrass myself further.
5
It’s fair to say I got very little sleep that night.
Don’s beautiful face and sensuous body haunts my thoughts and visions.
In my dreams, he doesn’t let go of the kiss. He prolongs it, kissing me over and over – slow, probing, delicious kisses that turn my stomach into jelly. His hands roam all over my clothed body before pausing at the swell of my neckline. His right warm palm makes a sweep of the heated flesh. Then it dips down to my left breast and cups it.
I moan softly against his lips, and he squeezes my tit harder. His erection strains against my leg – firm and pressing in its obvious need.
You’re not good enough, says the sly voice in my head. Look at him. I mean, just look at him. He’s a stallion, a magnificent bird of paradise.
What the fuck would he want with someone like you?
When I’m not dreaming of Don and when I’m halfway in that land of half-awake and half-asleep, I’m thinking of him in the next room. I have forgotten to buy him pajamas. So is he sleeping naked – his gloriously muscled body draped across the bed with his arms carelessly thrown back above the pillow? Has he snuggled under the quilt or is he on top of it, with his stiff penis standing like a flagpole above his sleek pubic hair?
Is he thinking of me as well and feeling as hot and bothered as I am?
My thoughts and dreams spiral away in wisps as the thudding in my head continues. I drift awake. The sun is shining through my bedroom window. The birds are loud in their celebration of morning.
The thudding continues. It sounds like pounding fists against some sort of wood.
A little dazed, I sit up in bed. I’m in my sleepwear – a patterned blue elongated T-shirt that comes down to my knees. I didn’t ‘dress up’ for bed last night because I knew there was no chance of Don changing his mind.
Downstairs, the doorbell rings – insistently and rudely.
I pad to the window. Outside, parked close to my front door, is a black Mercedes-Benz van with tinted windows.
I frown. Where h
ave I seen that before? It looks awfully familiar for some reason.
Then it hits me.
On the road yesterday. The black van veering past us from the opposite direction, almost forcing me into the ditch.
Oh shit. I’m suddenly frightened. Have I annoyed a road bully and is he now taking his revenge by tracking me down in my own house?
Thank God I have Don.
I quickly dress in a sleeveless blouse and jeans. I debate whether or not to get Don to come down with me, but his door is shut.
Come on, Jean, I tell myself sternly. You didn’t have a man for months and Don isn’t going to be around much longer. You can and will take care of yourself.
I hurry downstairs as the pounding starts up again. I wonder why Don hasn’t been awoken, and then I realize that the guest room is a little way back from the front and sounds don’t carry there so well. Going to the front door, I peer through my peephole.
A woman and two men stand outside my porch. The men are dressed in officious-looking suits. The woman wears a light purple jacket over a matching skirt. Her red hair is shoulder-length and her lipstick is a bright red.
They don’t look very dangerous, but looks can be deceiving.
I open the door. I’m aware that my hair is slightly mussed and I’m not wearing any makeup.
“Good morning,” the woman says. Her complexion is slathered with a mask of thick foundation to make it appear flawless. Her vivid blue eyes are sharp and bright. She holds up an identification badge. “I’m Agent Pamela Sansky from the NPB.”
Her tones are clipped and military.
“NP what?” I say, squinting in the sun.
“National Projects Bureau. We found you through the police report you made yesterday. We see fit to warn you that you may be inadvertently harboring a dangerous criminal.”
The floor falls from under me.
“What?”
Suddenly, the sky seems too bright.
“The man – the amnesiac – currently staying with you,” she explains, as though to a person hard of understanding, “is a psychologically deranged criminal who has been incarcerated with us under the Security Act. He poses a severe danger to national security.”
OK. Too many big words I can’t wrap around my head. Don? A psychologically deranged criminal? Whose lips are beyond sublime and whose body elicits lust pangs in me whenever I gaze upon him?
My head is throbbing. The lounge threatens to spin around me but I refuse to give quarter.
“I, uh . . . he didn’t seem very dangerous to me . . . ”
His mouth against mine. His tongue, probing wetly and deeply. His cock nestling against my side when he was asleep beside me in the storm shelter.
“His personality and looks can be very deceiving, Ms. Mansfield.” Agent Sansky’s facial muscles ease a little and her expression turns softer. “Look, you’ve been through a difficult time with this man, and we’re here to take him off your property. The sooner you lead us to him, the sooner you can get back your life.”
“But we were with the police. They have no record of him being a criminal,” I insist.
If he’s so dangerous, there would be some sort of record on him being put out with every squad car in the vicinity, right?
Agent Sansky eyes me pityingly. “Certain top secret political prisoners are not openly advertised on police records, Ms. Mansfield.”
She cranes her neck to look past me in the lounge, as if she expects Don to be right behind me.
I don’t know what to think or feel. My mind is a maelstrom.
Don – a political criminal. What does that mean? Is that why his accent is a little off even though he speaks perfect English? Where does he come from then? An Eastern bloc country? I didn’t even know we were still at war with them.
But he doesn’t seem deranged. That’s the part that gets me. He seems perfectly normal, in a manner of speaking, even if he has amnesia and strange abilities. He doesn’t seem dangerous either. He’s kind and sensitive and beyond caring.
I’ve already outstayed my welcome here.
The whole thing doesn’t make sense. OK, maybe it does and I don’t know the whole picture, but Don is not psychologically deranged. I’m willing to stake my life on it.
Can a previously psychologically deranged person turn normal after a traumatic event that gave him generalized amnesia?
“Ms. Mansfield?” Agent Sansky is regarding me with suspicion. She puts a foot forward as if to edge past me.
I swallow. “Yes. Of course. I’ll show you his room.”
All my instincts are screaming that this is wrong, wrong, wrong. But then again, I don’t know what’s happening. All I know is that I have three government agents at my doorstep and they are going to arrest the criminal I have been in lust with.
Like a zombie, I walk up the stairs, programmed by rote that I must comply with persons in authority. My heart hammers with each footstep – wham, wham, wham. I’m not doing anything wrong, my head says although my gut tells me otherwise.
I find my voice. “So how did he escape?”
“Beg pardon?” says Agent Sansky beside me.
The two male agents who did not introduce themselves are behind us, shadowing our footsteps every way. In many ways, they feel more dangerous than Don. Although their suits are impeccable and their hair straight-combed back like an Ivy League preppie, the guns that surreptitiously outline their jackets are ominous in their shoulder holsters.
We reach the guestroom.
With a deep breath, I rap my knuckles on the door.
“Don? Are you awake?”
It occurs to me that it will be a rude shock. It’s unfair, really, to do this to him.
Before I can knock again, Agent Sansky wrenches the handle and pushes the door open forcefully. It crashes against the wall with a resounding bang.
“Wh – ?” I begin, but stop short as I stare at the empty bed. It’s perfectly made, with the coverlet nicely arranged.
Agent Sansky strides into the room.
“Find him,” she commands as she flings the closet door open. The men rush into the room. It is as if they have been galvanized into loud action without any of the niceties they have been trying to deceptively portray earlier.
The blood rushes through my head in a torrent. Sometime during the night, when I was tossing and turning in my fevered dreams, Don must have left the house.
Left me high and dry without so much as a note.
I don’t know which is worse. To find out that he is a wanted political criminal or that the kiss meant absolutely nothing to him.
He used me, comes the awful clarity in my whirling brain.
But then why, why, why did he come with me to the police? That is not the act of a criminal who does not want to be found. Unless something came to him in the middle of the night – some unbidden memory, perhaps – and he left without disturbing me.
I don’t know if I will ever know. All I know is that Don’s warm presence still invades this room – his gorgeous body sprawled upon the coverlet as he suppresses his nose bleed. The kiss. The merging of our wet tongues. His throbbing cock, pushing against the barely contained fly of the jeans I bought for him.
Finding nothing, the agents are searching the other rooms and downstairs. I am left standing at the doorway of the guest room, frozen to the spot.
I struggle to take hold of my senses as I hear bangs and thuds downstairs. If they so much as destroy any part of my property . . .
Anger courses through me. Despair. I run down the stairs, clutching at the bannister to steady myself lest my wobbly feet betray me.
Don, Don, Don . . . why did you – ?
A figure stands at the main doorway. Don stands there, wearing a blue T-shirt that I purchased yesterday on top his well-cut Gap jeans. His face is flushed. A wet patch of sweat grazes the chest of his T-shirt.
He has a bunch of flowers in his hand.
“Jean? Who’s here?”
“Don!”
I want to shout a warning to him to run. Yes, I know . . . but that is my first instinct. My gut instinct.
Too late. Agent Sansky appears beside me. It’s like she’s seen an apparition. Her lips part slightly and her expression becomes beatific.
Beneath her breath, I hear the half-whispered word, “Amazing.”
That is not the reaction I would expect from a government agent who has come face to face with a psychologically-deranged criminal she must recapture at all costs. Unless I misheard it, of course.
“Don, run!” I cry.
Agent Sansky whips her revolver out from inside her jacket and aims it at Don, who drops the flowers. The individual blooms scatter the moment they hit my porch.
“Don’t move,” she says.
Bewildered, he raises his arms. Even in his tense state, his large figure frames the doorway as perfectly as a GQ model at a photo shoot.
Agent Sansky jerks her head at one of her men. “Cuff him.”
Don says, “What did I do? Who the hell are you?”
I search his features. He is truly surprised.
If he is acting, he is doing a very good job out of it.
Agent Sansky makes as if to reply, but glances at me and thinks the better of it. One of the male agents goes to Don, the edge of a handcuff glinting in his outstretched hand.
“We’re doing this for your own good,” Agent Sansky says to Don. She does not divert her gun from his chest.
As the male agent reaches for Don’s raised right wrist, Don suddenly grabs the agent’s outstretched arm with a motion that resembles a blur. The agent gives a shrill cry as Don pivots him around and twists his arm behind his back.
Don holds him as a shield in the path of Agent Sansky’s gun.
He says, “I don’t know who you are and why you’re doing this, but I’m not going to be chained like a slave at an auction. And I’m certainly not going to come with you.”
Agent Sansky’s eyes narrow. Beside her, the other agent has also taken out his handgun and cocked it. Two black muzzles are now pointed at Don’s head.
“Let him go,” Agent Sansky says.
“Not until you tell me what this is about.”
The Gorgeous Naked Man in my Storm Shelter (Erotic Suspense) Page 4
