She started, then forced herself to relax. It was, she had to admit, getting easier. “Yes.”
He kept his arm around her waist. “I thought this would look more natural to Janice and Jacob, like we were actually married,” he whispered against her ear.
Had he noticed that she’d stiffened? Of course he had. There was no way he could have missed it. When would the random touch of a man’s hand not set her off like this?
“Good idea,” she murmured. “And thanks for leaving the Jeep for me. It was nice getting behind the wheel again.” She grinned. “I never thought I’d hear myself say it, but I miss driving.”
The din was getting louder. He inclined his head toward her. “It’s being forced to do something that takes away from the pleasure.”
She looked at him sharply. Was he trying to tell her something? And then she dismissed it as being silly on her part. He was just making a random observation. There was no way he could know about the turn her marriage had taken. He didn’t even know she’d been married.
She nodded toward the center table. “They look like they’re enjoying themselves.” Taking a closer look, she reevaluated her impression. “At least, Jacob does.”
Jacob had always been able to have a good time, when he laid aside his goals. “He liked it here well enough,” Luc remembered. “But there weren’t enough opportunities for him.”
She turned her face toward Luc, very much aware that his hand was still around her waist. And that she liked it there.
“But there were for you.” It wasn’t a question.
He shrugged as he carefully guided her back to the main table. “We were looking for different things.”
The comment peaked her interest. “And did you find what you were looking for?”
His eyes swept over her, warming her skin even more than the close quarters did. “I’m getting there.”
Before she had a chance to ask where “there” was, Ike came up on her other side and planted a quick, cousinly kiss on her lips. “About time you got here.” He pulled up a chair for her.
The others hailed her as she sat down, though she noted that Janice’s greeting was a little cool. “I had some things to finish up,” Alison explained.
Ike shook his head. “Works you like a slave, doesn’t he, darlin’?” Not giving her a chance to come to Shayne’s defense, he placed a brandy glass in front of her. It was filled with a bright pink, foamy-looking liquid. “Here, I want you to try this, tell me what you think of it.”
It looked tempting. She turned the glass around slowly by its stem. The light overhead shimmered over the surface. “What is it?”
“Something I made up for Marta. I call it Smiles.” Ike waved his hand at the room, a collection of regulars mingled in with people who generally did their celebrating at home. The men outnumbered the women seven to one. “Don’t get much of a chance to serve it to this crowd. Drink up, tell me what you think. Puts roses in your cheeks.”
“And a buzz in your head,” Marta added, laughing. With a grin, Ike threw his arm around his wife and pulled her closer to him.
Luc drew his chair closer to Alison’s. “You don’t have to have that if you don’t want to.” She probably preferred wine. It was what he’d seen her drinking at the club in Seattle. He reached for the glass. “I can bring you something else.”
She stayed his hand. “No, that’s okay. I like trying new things.”
“Oh, you’ve got yourself a rare woman, there, boyo,” Paddy cackled behind them. He hobbled by, leaning on his crutch and holding tightly to his glass of beer with the other hand.
Feeling as if she’d suddenly become the center of attention, Alison took a tentative sip from the glass. A warm, sunny feeling seemed to pour slowly through her as she felt the liquid spread out through her veins.
It was the same sort of feeling, she thought, she had whenever she caught Luc smiling at her. Her eyes met Ike’s. “This is good.”
Vindicated, Ike didn’t bother hiding his triumph as he looked at his cousin. “Told you she’d like it.”
“He’s going to be impossible to live with, you realize that,” Luc told Alison.
“He already is,” Marta countered, tucking her arms around her husband’s torso and inclining her head against his shoulder. “Especially since he just found out he’s going to be a father.”
“But you already are,” Alison pointed out.
Marta grinned. “Yes, but this time he actually put down the groundwork himself.”
The men at Marta’s elbow hooted.
Amid congratulations, everyone took their turn pounding Ike on the back, but Alison noticed that the glance Jacob exchanged with Janice had a solemnity in it that almost hurt to witness. She looked away before either one could realize that she’d noticed it.
Raising her glass high, she was the first to toast the prospective parents, finishing the remainder of her drink.
“Thanks, darlin’,” Ike squeezed her shoulder.
Her head was buzzing. Walking into the bedroom, she felt lighter than a scrap of nylon being whisked away by a playful spring breeze.
Smiling, she hugged herself.
“You certainly seem happy tonight.”
His voice surrounded her. She turned a little too sharply to look at him. Wobbly, she lost her bearings for a second. The next moment, he was beside her, grabbing her by the arms and holding her.
She closed her eyes and welcomed the feeling.
“I am,” she breathed, opening her eyes again. How was it that she’d been running from this, when it felt so wonderful? When he felt so wonderful?
She placed her hands on his arms when he began to release her. “No, don’t.”
The soft entreaty whispered along his skin, tightening his gut. Playing havoc with everything in between.
He’d spent most of the evening watching her. And wanting her.
There’d been something different about her tonight. She’d seemed happier, freer. The tension he’d seen along her brow was gone. Even now, her laughter still felt as if it was trapped within his chest, teasing his heart.
Just like her body, so tantalizingly close, was teasing his.
A man knew his limits and he was swiftly approaching his. He tried to loosen his hold on her again. “Alison, I think for your own good—”
Her hands remained where they were. She was standing very close to the edge now, and the fear hadn’t come yet. She could feel her heart all but leaping for joy inside her.
Her eyes held his. She slipped her arms around his neck. “Maybe I don’t want to think about my own good right now. Maybe I don’t want to think at all.”
Did she even have a clue what she was doing to him? He doubted it. “I’m only human, Alison.”
“I know.” Standing on her toes, she brought her mouth very close to his. So close that the kiss was there between them before it touched his mouth.
It took everything he had to try to hold her off and himself in check. He figured this qualified him for a spot beside Galahad at Arthur’s Round Table. Either that, or a Purple Heart for valor above and beyond the call. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Maybe I do.” Feeling wonderful, feeling freer than she had in years, Alison made her affirmation by pressing a small, nerve-scrambling kiss to his neck.
Luc’s eyes fluttered shut as he absorbed the sensation. It shot through his body like an urgent alarm. “Is this some sort of a test?” he said with effort as her lips moved along his throat, slowly undoing him. His arms involuntarily tightened around her. “Because if it is, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to pass.”
She drew her head back. Her eyes were wide when they looked at him. Wide and clear. “Take me away from everything. From all these things inside my head.”
Before he could protest, for her sake because it definitely wasn’t for his, she sealed her mouth to his. And sealed their fate.
Passion flared instantly, like kerosene suddenly thrown on smolderin
g flames, making them burst into sheets of fire. That’s how her body felt. Like it had burst into flame. And burned brightly.
She wanted him. Desperately. And wanted him to want her.
Unable to help himself, praying that there would be forgiveness somewhere in the night, Luc gave up the fight and gave in to her.
And to himself.
Over and over again, he kissed her. Kissed her eyes, her lips, her face, the curve of her neck, the hollow of her throat. Kissed the creamy, delicate shoulders beneath the blouse he almost ripped from her in his attempt to draw the material away.
A button was lost in the skirmish.
“Sorry,” he breathed.
Her head spinning, Alison ignored the rest of the buttons and quickly pulled her blouse up, over her head, throwing it on the floor. “I know how to sew.”
With that, she yanked both sides of his shirt apart, sending more buttons flying after the first. The remaining slid from their holes on contact. Breathing hard, she pulled the material down his shoulders.
“Good thing,” he murmured.
Curtailing eagerness at every turn, he worked his way along her chin, grazing it with his teeth. When she moaned, he thought his own knees would buckle. How could something so delicate reduce him to such a mass of wants and desires so quickly? How could it take a strong, strapping man in his prime and turn him into something that bore a startling resemblance to a bowl of hot oatmeal?
It didn’t matter how. What mattered was that she had. Easily.
Because he wanted to give her every opportunity to pull back, even if the price would be his own self-destruction, Luc forced himself to slow down. And thus to tantalize and tease them both beyond endurance by doing so.
With his forefinger, he caught the inside of her jeans, slowly passing the tip of his finger along the sensitive skin of her quivering belly. He could feel his own breathing growing shallow, speeding up until the sound of it matched the tempo he heard coming from her. Slowly, his eyes on hers, he flipped the metallic button out of the hole and then, even more slowly, slid the zipper down to its source. The look in her eyes excited him, urged him on.
She tightened her fingers on his triceps as he slipped both hands inside her jeans, coaxing them from her hips, inch by torturous inch.
A flare went up, searing through the hot passion that was enveloping her. A sliver of icy panic she fought to beat back.
He could feel it, feel the alarm she was struggling to overcome. Concern took precedence over desire. “Alison? What is it?”
“Nothing.” She pressed her lips to his. “Nothing.” She would outrace it, she would. This one time she wouldn’t allow it to ruin things.
The kiss deepened. The wild spinning in her head returned and she clung to it, concentrating on it, focusing on Luc, and not on the specter of fear that stood just outside the perimeter of her consciousness, searching for a crack to wedge through.
She was like a woman possessed, he thought. His realm of experience was not nearly as broad as his cousin’s and he had never had a woman do these kinds of things to him, create such sensations within him. He hardly knew himself. There was tenderness, but it was framed in passion the likes of which he could barely control.
Kicking away his own jeans, Luc took her to his bed, laying her down and enveloping her in his arms. In his world.
Wildly she struggled to draw this bit of happiness to her before all her castles in the sky came crashing down. Before the fear she had lived with all these years, fanned by a dark memory, rose up to destroy everything and freeze her.
“Make love with me, Luc,” she breathed, her chest brushing against his, enflaming him.
He paused, gathering what was left of his senses. Brushing aside the damp hair that had plastered itself against her forehead, he looked down at her face. Very lightly his fingers ran along her cheek. He didn’t see fear in her eyes, but was it still hovering somewhere, waiting for her, waiting for a weak moment? He wanted this to be as wondrous for her as it was for him. Otherwise it wasn’t any good.
A smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “I thought that’s what I was doing.”
She wasn’t saying it right again, but this was no time to search for the right words. “I mean, take me, now.”
He wanted to. Needed to, but there was pleasure in prolonging the journey, in making her feel desirable, precious, and he meant to give her that.
His mouth beside her temple, he whispered, “Slowly, Alison, slowly,” and drove her utterly insane.
Demands drummed through her, shrieking for release. Wanting, just this once, to reach their peak and burst. She arched against him, her body pleading her case more urgently, more eloquently, than her words ever could.
Still he held to his silent promise to give her more, making love to her with every fiber of his being. Touching gently, caressing not fondling, and all the while, worshiping her and this heretofore undiscovered sensation that he’d now laid claim to.
Until he couldn’t resist the siren song any longer.
He’d reduced her to a mindless puddle of quivering needs and responses. There was nothing but haze around her. Haze and his wondrous face. She saw it above her now as she felt his body draw slowly over hers. Her heart quickened, feeling the edginess of fear approaching. Without a word, she opened for him, arched toward him. Ready, wanting. Hopeful.
She bit her lip when he came to her, struggled against the pressure she felt as he filled her. Her nails dug into his shoulders and her muffled cry was swallowed up within his mouth. And then, the fear that had been encroaching vanished as she began to move with him. Move urgently toward the final pleasure.
When it came, she bit her lip to keep from crying out her exhalation. She’d never reached this peak before, never felt a climax shudder through her body, bringing with it a taste of paradise. Euphoria blanketed her.
Heart slamming against her ribs, breath depleted, she fell back, exhausted. Alison didn’t even realize that her eyes were squeezed shut until she opened them again. And looked up at his face.
She had no idea what she expected to see there. Pity? Triumph? Annoyance? She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that she couldn’t read his expression, but his eyes were kind.
Luc stroked back her hair again, then lightly kissed her lips. “Does that qualify?”
She didn’t understand. “Qualify?”
“As making love.” Maybe she didn’t remember. “In the middle of it, you asked me to make love with you and I just wanted to make sure everything met with your satisfaction.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead. And felt her withdraw. “Did it?”
She turned her face into the pillow. “Don’t make fun of me.”
Very gently he coaxed her back to look at him. “Oh, lady, after what just happened, there’s no way I have the strength to make fun of you.”
A flicker of hope, of pride, came. It was silly, and yet it wouldn’t leave her. “Then it was all right?”
Didn’t she know? Couldn’t she feel what had just happened? “It was ‘all right’ only if you have a very, very limited vocabulary.” He kissed her cheek, but she didn’t turn toward him. Whatever it was that held her in its grip was still there. And vying for possession of her again. The debate was short-lived. “I make it a practice never to pry, Alison, but if you want to talk to me…” He let his voice trail off, letting her fill in whatever needed to be filled.
Caution and suspicion were in her eyes. “About?”
He wished he had Ike’s gift for phrasing things. But he hadn’t, and he did the best he could, armed only with good intentions and his own desire to make her feel better. “About whatever it is that makes you so afraid every time I touch you.”
Why did he have to ruin things by asking questions? She’d tried her very best to be what he wanted her to be. “I wasn’t afraid just then.”
That wasn’t entirely true, but he let her have the lie. And even so, she’d needed a crutch to be with him like this. “Only because you’d had a
drink or two.” The look in her eyes told him that he’d struck a nerve. “It let you put aside whatever it is that’s bothering you, but that’s not a permanent solution.”
She wished he’d stop. “There is no permanent solution.”
He moved off her and gathered her to him. He could feel her stiffening. Resisting what he was saying. “Talking it out is a start. My mother used to say that if something was bothering you and you didn’t let it out, it only got bigger and bigger—until it was bigger than you.” Her silence echoed between them. “Is that what happened, Alison? Did it get bigger than you?”
She sighed, feeling tears gathering in her throat. “Maybe.”
“Derek?” he guessed.
She looked at him in surprise. “How did you know about Derek?”
“Kevin told me.” He saw the look that came into her eyes. “Don’t blame him. That last night we were there, I asked if you were leaving anyone behind. He told me about your divorce.”
Alison shook her head. “No, it’s not Derek. Derek just got caught in the cross fire.”
Luc heard more than she was saying. “But he didn’t help.”
Alison pressed her lips together, not wanting to say any more. Feeling she owed him at least something of an explanation. “No, he didn’t help. To be fair, I never told him, either. I thought that I could get over it on my own. Outgrow it.”
He rose on his elbow, his eyes intent on her face. “What ‘it’? Alison?” He saw the resistance grow. “I’m not prying, I want to help.”
She wanted to tell him, really wanted to. But the words refused to come out. They’d been locked inside for so long. The memory had been locked inside and if she opened it, the shame would return. The shame she swore she would never allow to take possession of her.
“You can help by not asking me.” Gathering the comforter to her, she wrapped it around her body and got up. “I’m going to get ready for bed.”
Frustrated, he watched her disappear into the bathroom. He couldn’t force her to tell him, so for now he’d let her retreat. But he meant to get to the bottom of whatever it was that was haunting her.
Found: His Perfect Wife Page 17
