"Is that all?" She feigned nonchalance. She was finding it hard to keep from laughing.
"What do you mean, 'Is that all'? It was cold as hell!" He shuddered at the recollection and gave her a pained look. "My God, woman, what more do you want?"
"I'd like to know what you said to prompt such a reaction."
Garth looked pointedly at the teacup she had just refilled. "I don't think I care to risk repeating it while you're holding a hot drink."
"I'll put it down then."
She did this and watched him so expectantly that he shifted uneasily in his chair.
"I'm not sure I can quote myself exactly," he stalled.
"A general idea will do," she persisted brightly. She leaned one elbow on the table and cupped her chin with her hand to cover a furtive smile. If she didn't know better, she'd think Garth was blushing. The tips of his ears were certainly a healthy pink.
"Well—" He hesitated. "Look, Julie, it's going to sound really stupid under these conditions."
"I don't mind," she said airily.
"Of course you don't! I'm the one who's going to look like an ass." He slammed his own cup down on the table and sighed resignedly. "All right," he growled, "since you're so blasted anxious to hear it. It was something to the effect that I wouldn't be content with just a sample, and that the real test of manhood was being able to, uh, make love—for as long as it takes to empty an entire bottle of wine—"
"Only you meant emptying the bottle by drinking the wine," she finished sweetly.
Garth nodded. He was decidedly flustered. "And you proceeded to pour it out in two seconds or less!" A foolish grin spread across his face. "And to add insult to injury you apologized for revealing my shortcomings. So I figure I got more than I deserved."
"Altogether, it doesn't sound as if it was a very promising start to a blind date," Julie remarked pensively.
"It wasn't. And the evening was more of the same. If anything it was worse. You were steamed because I might have gotten you fired. Still, you had to acknowledge I'd gone to bat for you with your boss. So when I explained the problem Rod and Betty were having finding some privacy, you insisted on being dropped off in town. You planned to go to a double feature and stay at the movie theater until it was late enough to go home."
"I told myself I was happy to be rid of you. I thought I never wanted to see you again. But I couldn't get you out of my mind. The next weekend I went back to the winery with Rod—he was my excuse, you see—and that was when I discovered who your father was."
"Did that time go any better?"
His smile faded. "Not much," he said glumly. "I made the fatal mistake of kissing you. From then on I was sunk and I knew it."
"Didn't we have any common interests?" she asked wistfully.
"Enough, I suppose," he replied brusquely. "We both enjoyed all sorts of music, wind-surfing, going to the beach—that type of thing."
She could tell from the abstracted way he'd answered that he was deep in thought and, sighing regretfully over the fact that their lighthearted conversation had ended on such a low note, she began clearing the table.
They did go to bed early that night but because of her nap Julie was wakeful. She lay quietly with her back to Garth, reliving the events of the evening.
After they'd tidied the kitchen and set out some food for Buck, Garth put a Brahms concerto on the stereo. They hadn't bothered to light the fire, since neither of them wanted to leave it burning when they turned in. When they put Buck outside, they waited on the porch for him to complete his nightly circuit of the grounds and they'd laughed at his antics as he frolicked around the yard, as frisky as a puppy, until he ran out of sight behind the garage.
Garth stood by the railing with his feet planted firmly apart and his head thrown back as he looked up at the sky. In this lordly stance his pride was flagrantly apparent, but for some reason Julie was no longer put off by it.
"Will you look at those stars," Garth said in a subdued voice. "They're so close, you'd swear you could reach up and grab a handful of them."
"I know," she agreed reverently. "It's so clear, it's hard to believe that snow is forecast for tomorrow."
It was true that there wasn't a cloud in the sky, but the night air was icy; a penetrating wind was blowing from the northwest. Julie snuggled more closely into her sweater, burying her chin in the heavy shawl collar. There was no moon and although the more prominent glaciers and snowfields dimly reflected the starlight, the saw-toothed ridges of the Tetons were more envisioned than actually seen.
The howl of a coyote reverberated from far away and the darkness underscored the eeriness of the cry. Julie felt the short hairs at the nape of her neck stand on end; the skin on her forearms broke out in goose-flesh. The call was repeated, and from a different direction the counterpoint was picked up when another animal joined the plaintive song. She sidled closer to Garth while they listened to the desolate duet. On and on went the weird harmony, and the wild cries of yearning spoke to something equally primitive within her.
Garth was also affected. His shoulders were hunched and his hands were clenched about the porchrail so tightly, the knuckles were a stark bone-white through his sun-browned skin.
"God," he muttered hoarsely. "That's got to be the loneliest sound in the world."
Wanting to comfort him, Julie had put her hand over one of his, but he hadn't seemed to notice.
Would she ever truly understand him? she wondered. Somehow she didn't think so. She knew some of his moods; she had learned—the hard way—that the color of his eyes was a reliable indicator of a few of them: Gray for anger, for disapproval, for pride. Green for contentment, for concern—for passion? Gold for humor, for teasing, for happiness. And sometimes they were a mixture of all three. What did that signify? Doubt, perhaps? Or rare indecision?
It bewildered her to think that for the past few days he had so frequently questioned her reasons for marrying him, while she had never once mustered sufficient courage to ask him why he had married her. For her it was enough to know that Garth was her husband and that she loved him. Oh, God, she acknowledged silently, I love him so much. Everything else seemed to pale into insignificance in the radiance of that miracle.
What was he thinking? He was lying on his back with his arms folded behind his head and although he was perfectly still, she knew he was still awake. He was so near, she was enveloped by the heat from his body, but he seemed so far away.
I wish— She closed her eyes tightly, concentrating with every particle of her being on her unspoken prayer. I wish he'd kiss me. I want him to touch me. I wish he'd speak to me, say my name. Only my name. If he says my name before I can count to one hundred, she promised herself, everything will be all right.
Willing him to give her this small omen, she began counting slowly, and when she reached fifty, even more slowly. By the time she reached sixty, she knew she couldn't bear his silence any longer.
Almost inaudibly she asked, "Garth, are you awake?"
"Um-hmmm." He sounded sleepy but the suspension of his regular respirations, the sudden tensing of his muscles had given away how alert he really was.
"How much longer will we be staying here?"
"I don't know, Julie." He sighed wearily. "A few days maybe."
His tone of voice discouraged further conversation, and although she wanted to squirm uncomfortably, for a while she lay quietly. The silence between them became more and more oppressive. She was being suffocated by it and she wanted to scream.
"Garth," she murmured, and quickly, before she could lose her nerve, she requested, "would you tell me more about our courtship."
"For God's sake, Julie—"
"Please," she implored him fervently.
It was some moments before he replied, and when he did, there was an oddly strangled quality about his voice, as if he were having trouble breathing properly. "What would you like to know?" he asked.
"Did we kiss a lot?"
"That's about all
we did do at first."
"Why only at first?"
"You wouldn't let me make love to you until we were married, and it got to be more than I could take, constantly trying to turn off in the middle of things. So I stopped kissing you."
"What did we do when we weren't kissing?"
"We had a lot of rather heated debates—arguments— Hell!" he said disgustedly. "The truth of the matter is, we fought!"
"What did we fight about?"
"Everything. Nothing. Who knows?" The mattress dipped a bit as he turned his head to look at her, but other than that he didn't change position. "I think we used to fight because we were so frustrated. I wanted to make love to you, and you wanted it too… At least part of you did. I think you were fighting with yourself more than with me. And we never really talked. I've gotten to know you better in the last few days than in all the weeks we were dating."
The pall of silence descended again while Julie mulled this over. Finally she turned onto her other side and lay facing him.
"Garth," she called his name softly.
"Hmmm?"
"Would you kiss me now?"
This time he was quiet for so long that she began to fear he might have fallen asleep. She held her breath while she waited for his answer, so keyed up that, when at last he spoke, she started.
"Dammit, Julie!" he snapped. "I'm not made of stone. If I kiss you now, I won't stop."
Driven by her longing to be close to him, she moved compulsively nearer. Her body was aching with the need for him. "I won't want you to stop," she whispered.
Garth remained warily motionless. "How can you be so certain of that?"
"I don't know. I just feel it."
"God help me if I'm wrong," he groaned, "but I feel it too."
Before the sound of his voice had completely died away, Garth had turned onto his side and his arm was hard around her, pulling her close to the taut length of his body. His lips were trailing over her face, leaving fiery little kisses on her forehead, her temples, her cheeks, while her own lips were relishing the raspiness of stubble, the clean yet faintly salty taste of his jaw, his throat, his chin—planting exploratory kisses on whichever part of him happened to be within her reach.
She was gasping his name, sobbing without tears, tormented by an unbearable craving for the touch of his lips and when his mouth intercepted hers, she returned the hungry pressure of his lips with undisguised eagerness, meeting the intoxicating feint and parry of his tongue with an almost desperate eroticism. Her arms held him fiercely; her hands were slippery with perspiration as they caressed the smooth hard skin at the small of his back. She felt feverishly restless, and her body arched with unwitting provocation in response to the least movement of his.
"Slowly, Julie. Slowly, darling," he crooned against her lips. Through half-closed eyelids she watched dazedly as he raised his head. In spite of the darkness of the bedroom, she seemed to be viewing him through a roseate haze as he smiled down at her.
"We have all the time in the world. We have all the rest of our lives." His mouth descended to nuzzle her ear, and a tremor of excitement shook her when he caught the fleshy part of the lobe between the sharp edges of his teeth to nibble it gently and murmur one last pledge: "We have as long as it takes to drink the wine."
He had unbuttoned the pajama top and pushed it away from her shoulders and now he slid one arm underneath her, effortlessly lifting her in order to remove the jacket completely, and as he did so, the thrust of his unclad body against hers was incredibly exciting. His hands were roughened from working with the wood and his fingertips had a slight grittiness that was electrifying as he softly fondled her breasts. Her nipples tingled and grew proudly erect in the warm bowl of his palms.
Again and again he kissed her, teasing her with the exquisite thoroughness of his lovemaking, for there was no part of her that escaped his attention. She reached a state of frenzied awareness when he sought the pleasure points of her body and she felt the tip of his tongue—now probing the honied recesses of her mouth, now moistly tracing the convolutions of her ear, now burning hotly across her shoulders, now circling and invading the tiny hollow of her navel, now brushing sweet feathery patterns on her breasts.
She wove her fingers through his hair to cradle his head, gently at first and then with fast-rising urgency as she reveled in the sensuous contact of his lips. Blissfully freed of restraint, her hands wandered over his body with abandon, learning the sleek texture of his skin, loving the potent rippling of superbly conditioned muscle, marveling that he should be capable of such strength and at the same time such tenderness.
She was totally pliant and her body instinctively conformed to the contours of his as he molded her to him more intimately. Her arms and legs were all silky smoothness while his were hair-roughened. Her body was delicately rounded where his was ruggedly angular; all womanly softness where his was hard and masculine. His hands continued their tantalizing explorations, stroking over the length of her spine, pausing to savor the graceful curve from waist to hip, lingering on the velvety flesh of her thighs.
Her delight was so overwhelming that she was frightened by its intensity, but her alarm was instantly communicated to him, and he claimed her mouth yet again, conquering her fear with the immediacy of his passion. He eased her onto her back, following her with the demanding weight of his body, and for a time the hard unrelenting pressure he exerted caused her pain that drowned out awareness of anything else. Her eyes opened wide with surprise, but as quickly as it had begun, the pain was gone. For only a moment longer they were two separate entities, and in the next instant the final fragile barrier was sundered, and they were one.
Julie had thought her pleasure could not possibly increase any further, but now she was journeying through a strange and secret world of sensuality with Garth as her guide. Knowing she would be forever lost without him, she clung to him without reservation as his wild caresses generated a new and delicious tension within her.
Please, please—oh, please! Her lips moved soundlessly to form the supplication, though she knew not for what she was pleading.
She was adrift in a tumultuous sea of desire, melting and floating away from herself, losing the essence of herself in Garth's sure possession of her. And when at last his ardor transported her to the very crest of the tidal wave, she had become pure sensation; she found that she had been recreated by the ecstasy they shared. Her odyssey with Garth cast her up on a pagan shore whose beauty was limited only by the boundless depths of her love for him, and she cried out breathlessly, "I love you!"
"Beautiful," he murmured raggedly. "So beautiful."
Garth's breathing was erratic. His lips ranged freely over her face, and his hands quieted her body. They continued to hold one another while their pulses slowed and a gentle feeling of languor seeped in to replace passion.
When Garth finally moved away from her in order to arrange the blankets around them, he kept one arm around her so that she lay snugly against his side with her head on his shoulder. Her face was tucked into the warm curve of his neck, and with every breath she drew, she inhaled the heady, musky scent of his skin. His free hand was rhythmically smoothing the damp tendrils of hair away from her face, and her limbs grew leaden with relaxation. Beneath the palm of the hand that rested on his chest, she could feel the crispness of hair, the heat of his body, the steady thud of his heart.
"Sleep now, my darling," he whispered drowsily.
"Yes," she agreed with a sigh. And completely contented, utterly fulfilled, she did.
Chapter Twelve
Julie was having the loveliest dream. Garth was embracing her, and his hands were moving over her; tenderly gliding over the silken plains, enfolding the warm contours of the hills and searching out the secret valleys.
"Wake up, sleepyhead," urged a deep voice close to her ear.
Not wanting to relinquish her fantasy, she murmured a protest and tried to recapture sleep.
"Wake up, Julie," the voice repeat
ed, and this time she recognized it as Garth's.
He touched his lips to her shoulder; his hands grew more persuasive, and she realized she wasn't dreaming at all. Memories of the joys he'd shown her in the night bubbled to the surface of her mind, and she opened her eyes. In the dim predawn light she had to strain to see his face close to hers on the pillow.
"Good morning, wife." He was smiling and his features were relaxed and smoothed of worry.
Shyly returning his smile, she asked, "Is it morning? It's still so dark."
"It's cloudy. In fact it's snowing."
She stifled a yawn. "Even so, it must be awfully early. What time is it?"
"Why all the interest in time? Are you in a hurry to go somewhere?"
"No, just curious."
Garth stretched his arm out from under the covers to check his watch, and the movement admitted a draft of cold air. He had to bring his wrist close to his eyes before he was able to make out the face of the watch, and in the process her nose was pressed against him. The mat of dark curling hair on his chest tickled maddeningly, making her want to sneeze before his hold on her loosened and his arm snaked back into the warmth beneath the blankets.
"It's almost seven o'clock," he declared.
Craning her neck to kiss him on the chin, she inquired lightly, "Almost?"
"Well," he replied slowly, "actually, it's only six fifteen."
"What are you doing awake so early?"
"I'd have thought the answer to that was obvious," he teased.
His hands had resumed their wandering, and when he briefly crushed her to him, she became aware of his arousal. Her face flamed, and he laughed deep in his throat, amused by her confusion.
"Ask a silly question…" he chided.
"But you didn't give me a silly answer!" she objected breathlessly. His excitement had ignited her own, and already her desire was quickening and flowering beneath his skillful touch.
"No?" he queried. He raised an eyebrow at her, shamming disbelief. He was acutely conscious of the burgeoning response of her body.
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