by Diana Palmer
The line went dead. Barrie stayed on it, waiting. After a minute the switchboard came on the line. She heard the operator’s voice with a sense of fate. She smiled.
“May I help you?” the operator repeated.
“Yes, you may. Can you tell me how to get to your hotel?”
* * *
Corlie muttered all the way to the airport in Sheridan, but she was smiling just the same. She put Barrie on the commuter flight to Salt Lake City, Utah, where she caught the California flight. It was tiring and she was already fatigued, but it seemed somehow the right thing to do, to get to her reluctant husband before he sobered up completely.
She arrived at the hotel very early the next morning and showed the hotel clerk her marriage license. It didn’t take much persuasion after that to coax him into letting her have a key to Dawson’s room.
Feeling like a conspirator, she let herself in and looked around the suite with a little apprehension. But timidity hadn’t brought her this far; courage had.
She opened the door to what must be the bedroom, and there he was, sprawled nude on the covers, as if he’d passed out before he could get under them. Not that he needed to. Bread could have been baked on the floor, judging by the temperature.
Barrie went to the air conditioner and found the switch turned off. She clicked it on high and cool air began to blow in. She stood there for a minute, because she was feeling a little nauseous from the heat. As the cool air filtered up to her face, she began to breathe more easily.
There was a sound and when she turned, Dawson was propped on one elbow, watching her through bloodshot eyes.
Eleven
“GOOD morning,” she said, shy now that she was actually facing him after their extraordinary conversation of the previous night.
“Good morning.” His eyes searched over her body in jeans and a tank top with a lined jacket over it. Her long hair was a little disheveled, and she looked flushed. He still wasn’t certain that she wasn’t a mirage. He scowled. “What are you doing here?”
“Turning on the air-conditioning,” she said.
He cocked an eyebrow. “Pull the other one.”
She lifted her chin and colored a little as her eyes registered his blatant masculinity. He wasn’t only nude, he was already aroused, and apparently not the least shy anymore about letting her see. “I’m getting educated.”
He smiled mockingly. “We’re married. If you don’t want to look at me, nobody’s making you.”
She glared at him. The wall was back up. She’d come all this way on hope, exhilaration that he’d finally admitted his feelings for her, only to find that she’d overstepped her limit again. He wasn’t going to admit anything. He was going to go right on keeping her at a distance, refusing to let her see into his heart. The baby wouldn’t make any difference. They’d live together like strangers with the child as their only common ground. She could see down the long, lonely years of loving without any visible return of her feelings for him, without hope.
“I came to tell you that I’m going back to Tucson,” she said coldly. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?” she added when he looked shocked. “That’s what this trip is all about. You married me because you felt you had to, but now you’re sorry and you don’t want me around. I make you lose control, and you can’t stand that.” She straightened. “Well, no more worries on that score. I’ve got my bags packed and I’ll be out of your house by tomorrow!”
He threw his legs off the bed and got up. Nude, he was more than intimidating. He moved toward her and abruptly lifted her up in his arms, turning to carry her back to bed.
“Put me down!” she snapped at him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’ll give you three guesses.” He tossed her onto the bed and followed her down, catching her flailing hands. He pressed her wrists into the mattress and poised there above her, his eyes pale and steady and totally unreadable.
“I hate you!” she said furiously. Her eyes stung with unshed tears as he blurred in her vision. “I hate you, Dawson!” she sobbed.
“Of course you do.” His voice sounded almost tender, she thought, through the turmoil of emotions. But surely it wasn’t. His hands slid up to melt into hers, tangling with her fingers as he bent and drew his lips softly, tenderly, over her mouth. His chest eased down, his long legs slid against hers in a silence that magnified her ragged breathing and the sound of his body moving against hers.
He drew her arms around his neck. His hands slid under her, disposing of catches and buttons and zippers. In a melting daze, she felt him undressing her, and all the while, his mouth was making her body sing. He nuzzled her breasts, tasting their hard tips, suckling them, while he removed the layers of fabric until she was as nude as he was. The thick hair on his chest tickled her skin at first, and then made her body tauten with desire.
He never spoke. He kissed her from head to toe, in ways he never had before, his hands touched her with a mastery that would have made her insanely jealous of the women he’d learned it with if she’d been able to think at all. His mouth teased and tempted and finally devoured hers. And all the while, he caressed her as if her pleasure was the most important thing in the world to him. He kindled fires and all but extinguished them over and over again until she was on the edge of madness, sobbing aloud for relief from the tension his expert caresses built in her.
But it was a long, long time later before he finally eased down between her legs and very gently probed the dark, sweet mystery of her body, covering her mouth with his just as he pushed softly and felt her open to absorb him.
She stiffened just a little, but there was no resistance at all to his passage, and he shifted just enough to make her gasp and cling to him before he probed even deeper. All the while, he was tender as he’d never been in the past, slow and quiet and utterly loving. Loving. She didn’t open her eyes once. She didn’t try to look at him. She lay drowning in the pleasure each slow, soft movement of his hips created, sobbing rhythmically under the exquisite throb of pleasure that grew deeper and deeper, like a drum beating in her body, beating, beating…
With maddening precision he built the pleasure to a crescendo that left her whimpering like a wounded thing, clinging fiercely, whispering things to him in her need that would shock her minutes later. But for now, there was no future, no shame. She pleaded helplessly, her whole body rising, shivering in a painful arch, a silent plea for fulfillment. And recognizing the end of her endurance, he moved sharply, suddenly, into complete possession in a slow, deep, endless rhythm that sent her spinning right up into the sun. Her nails bit into his back helplessly as she shuddered, sobbing under his mouth, crying out in anguished delight, tears raining down her cheeks as she endured the most incredible ecstasy she’d ever felt, so deep and throbbing that it was almost pain.
Only then, only when he felt her body convulse in the final spasms of completion did he drive fiercely for his own fulfillment. It was as before, spasms of aching pleasure that built and built and suddenly blazed in his taut body in an explosion of heat and light, making him mindless, shapeless, formless. He was part of her, as she was part of him. There was nothing in the world, only the two of them. Only…this…!
* * *
He saw the ceiling without seeing it. He was lying on his back, still trembling from the violence of his satisfaction. He could hear Barrie breathing raggedly. He could feel the dampness of her body where it lay so close and so far from his.
“They say that muscular contractions that violent could break bones without the narcotic of ecstasy to make them bearable,” he remarked drowsily when he had his breath back.
She didn’t say anything. She was lying on her stomach, half-dead with pleasure and so miserable that she wanted to hide. Sex. Only sex. He hadn’t said a word, all the while, and now he was treating her to a scientific explanation of sexual tension.
He rolled over onto his side and looked at her. She averted her face, but he pulled her against him and tilted her
chin up.
“Well, do you still want to leave me after that?” he asked. “Or would you like to try and convince me that all those outrageous, shocking things you whispered to me were the result of a bad breakfast…Barrie!”
She’d torn out of his arms in a mad dash for the bathroom, and only barely made it in time. She knelt there, her heart breaking in her chest, her eyes red with tears, while she lost her breakfast and everything in between. The monster! The monster, taunting her about a response she couldn’t help! And where had he learned such skills anyway, the licentious, womanizing…!
While she was thinking it, she was saying it.
Dawson wrapped a towel around his waist and with a resigned sigh, he wet a facecloth and knelt beside her. When the nausea finally passed, he bathed her face and carried her back to bed, tucking her gently under the sheet.
“I want my clothes.” She wept. “I can’t leave like this!”
“No problem there. Because you aren’t leaving.” He picked up her clothes, opened the window and threw them out.
She lay in a daze, watching him perform the most irrational act of their long acquaintance. She actually gasped out loud.
He calmly closed the window. Below there was a loud squeal of brakes. He cocked an eyebrow at her. “That lacy bra probably landed on some poor soul’s windshield and shocked him into panic,” he mused. “You shouldn’t wear things like that in your condition, anyway. It’s scandalous.”
She held the sheet tucked against her while she struggled with the possibility that Dawson’s mind had snapped.
He laughed softly as he stood over her, the towel just barely covering his lean hips. Her expression amused him. “What’s the matter?” he asked.
Her hand clenched on the cool cotton fabric. “I didn’t bring a change of clothes,” she said stiffly. “And now even my underwear—my underwear, for God’s sake!—is out there being handled by total strangers! How am I supposed to leave the room, much less the hotel?”
“You aren’t,” he replied. His eyes slid over her soft, faintly tanned shoulders and he smiled. “God, you’re pretty,” he said. “You take my breath away without your clothes.”
She didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure it would help the situation.
He sat down beside her with a rueful smile. “I guess I can’t expect you to understand everything at once, can I?” He smoothed back her hair and his eyes were tender on her pale face. “While you’re struggling with your situation, I’ll have them send up something to settle your stomach. How about some strawberry ice cream and melon?”
Her favorite things. She hadn’t realized that he knew. She nodded slowly.
“And some hot tea.”
“The caffeine…”
“Cold milk,” he amended, smiling.
She nodded again.
He picked up the phone, punched room service and gave the order. Then he went to his suitcase and pulled out one of his nice, clean shirts and laid it on the bed within reach. “I don’t wear pajamas,” he said. “But that will make you decent when room service comes.”
“How about you?” she asked uncomfortably.
He gave her a rueful look. “No guts?” he chided. “Don’t want to be seen with a naked man, even if you’re married to him?”
She flushed.
“And you were calling me a prude.” He got up, tossed the towel onto a chair and pulled on his slacks.
“Better?” he asked when he’d fastened the belt in place around them.
Better. She stared at him with pure pleasure, her eyes drifting over his broad, hair-covered chest down to his narrow waist and lean hips and long, powerful legs. He even had nice feet. She loved looking at him. But that was going to get her in trouble again so she averted her eyes to the bed.
He knew why. He sat back down with a long, heavy sigh and smoothed his big, warm hand over her bare shoulder. It was cool and damp to the touch. Her face was too pale, and a little pinched.
“Go ahead,” he invited. “Look at me. It doesn’t matter anymore. I suppose I told you all there was to tell last night. I don’t remember too much of what I said, but I’m sure I was eloquent,” he added bitterly.
She lifted her eyes warily to meet his. She didn’t say anything, but her face was sad and resigned and without life.
He grimaced. “Barrie…”
She burrowed her face into the pillow and gripped it. “Leave me alone,” she whispered miserably. “You’ve had what you wanted, and now you hate me all over again. It’s always the same, it’s always…!”
He had her up in his arms, close, bruisingly close. His face nuzzled against her soft throat through a cushion of thick wavy dark hair. “I love you,” he said hoarsely. “I love you more than my own life! Damn it, isn’t that enough?”
It was what he’d said last night, but he was sober now. She wanted so badly to believe it! But she didn’t trust him. “You don’t want to love me,” she whimpered, clinging closer.
He sighed heavily, as if he was letting go of some intolerable burden. “Yes, I do,” he said after a minute, and he sounded as if he were defeated. “I want you and our baby. I want to hold you in the darkness and make love to you in the light. I want to kiss away the tears and share the good times. But I’m afraid.”
“Not you,” she whispered, smoothing the hair at his nape. “You’re strong. You don’t feel fear.”
“Only with you,” he confessed. “Only for you. I never had a weakness until you came along.” His arms contracted. “Barrie,” he said hesitantly, “if I lose you, I can’t live.”
Her heart jumped. “But, you aren’t going to lose me!” she said. “I’m not going to walk out on you. I didn’t really mean it. I thought you wanted me to go.”
“No!” he said huskily, lifting his head. He looked worried. Really worried. He traced her soft cheek. “That’s not what I meant. I meant that I could lose you when you have the baby.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake…!” she exclaimed, stunned.
“Women do still die in childbirth,” he muttered uncomfortably. “My mother…did.”
She was learning things about him that she would never have dared ask, that she hadn’t known at all. She searched his eyes slowly. “Your mother died in childbirth?”
He nodded. “She was pregnant. She didn’t want to be, and she tried to have an abortion, but my father found out and made so many threats about cutting off the money she liked to spend that she gave in. She went into labor and something went wrong. They were out of the country, on a trip she’d insisted on taking even that late in her pregnancy. The only medical care available was at a small clinic. It was primitive, there was only an intern there at the time.” He sighed heavily. “And she died. He loved her, just as he’d loved your mother. It took him years to get over it. He felt responsible. So would I, if something happened to you.”
Her fingers twined around his. It was humbling to realize that he loved her that much. He didn’t want to get rid of her at all. He’d gone to the other extreme. He was terrified that he might lose her.
“I’m strong and healthy and I want this baby. I want to live,” she said softly. “I couldn’t leave you, Dawson,” she added firmly. “Not even to die.”
He looked down into her wet eyes and his face was strained, taut. He looked so stoic and immovable that it shocked her when he traced her mouth with a finger that wasn’t quite steady.
“You’ll learn to trust me one day,” she said softly. “You’ll learn that I’ll never deliberately hurt you, or belittle you, or try to make you feel less of a man because you care about me. And our child will never be mocked or spoken to with sarcasm.”
His hand stilled on her face. “And you won’t leave me,” he added with a bitter laugh.
She smiled. “No,” she said gently. “I have no life without you.” She took his hand and slid it under the cover to lie on the soft, bare swell of her stomach. “I’m pregnant,” she said. “We have a future to think about.”
/> “A future.” His hand flattened where she’d placed it. “I guess I’m going to have to stop living on bad memories. It’s hard.”
“The first step is to look ahead,” she told him.
He shrugged. He began to smile. “I suppose so. How far ahead?”
“To the nearest department store,” she said with sudden humor. “I can’t spend the day without underwear!”
He pursed his lips and for the first time since she’d arrived, he looked relaxed. “Why not?” he asked. “Are you sore already?”
She stared up at him uncertainly.
“Are you?” he persisted, and his hand moved insinuatingly. “Because I want to make love again.”
“It’s broad daylight,” she said pointedly.
His broad shoulders rose and fell. “It was broad daylight a few minutes ago,” he reminded her. His face was solemn. “You kept your eyes closed. Don’t do it again. I won’t make any more snide remarks about it. I’m sorry I made you ashamed of wanting to watch something so beautiful.”
She wasn’t sure how to take this apparent change in him. She searched his pale eyes, but there were no more secrets there. He wasn’t hiding anything from her.
“I know,” he murmured ruefully. “You don’t quite trust me, either, do you? But we’ll work it out.”
“Can we?”
The knock at the door interrupted what he might have replied. Barrie quickly slipped on his shirt and buttoned it while he let the waiter in, signed the bill and handed the man a tip on his way out.
“Take that off,” he murmured when he’d locked the door again, nodding toward the shirt.
“I won’t,” she replied.
“Yes, you will. But we’ll let your stomach get settled first,” he conceded. He picked up the small dish of homemade strawberry ice cream and sat down on the bed, lifting half a spoonful of it to her lips.
She was surprised, and looked it.
“You fed me when I had the wreck,” he reminded her. “Turnabout is fair play.”
“I’m not injured,” she replied.
