“Carrying you off,” he murmured, setting her half reclining on the sofa, resuming his kiss before she could protest. Her inkling of fear dissolved into pleasure. There seemed no finer dessert than Ryan’s warm lips, his moist tongue, the hands that firmly held her face, the strong body hovering very, very near.
She returned his kiss with a taste of the excitement that shot through her body. Long-dormant desire flared. She basked in the luxury of it. When he pulled back and sat up, she moaned in soft protest. Eyes holding hers, he shrugged out of his coat and unknotted his tie. In fascination she watched him release the first few buttons of his shirt. Then he lifted her, shifted her, until she sat sideways on his lap.
“You’re lovely,” he murmured as his head lowered, and then he was drugging her further, honing her senses, heating her blood.
Her breath came in short gasps. She felt his hands on her back, caressing her. Her own grew more bold, slipping forward to his chest, charting its manly contours. From the first, Ryan had inspried her curiosity. And she’d fought it. To some extent she still did. But the lure of his body, magnificent as far as she’d seen it, was too much. She wanted, she needed, to know his virile shape.
When his hands touched her breasts she cried out. Her body responded; it seemed she’d been waiting forever for his touch. It had been so long since…since. But she hadn’t missed a thing until she’d met Ryan. He alone had the power to ignite her senses and stir her to action.
Leaning forward, she put her lips to his throat and placed small, seeking kisses against its racing pulse. He tasted fresh and clean. Swept up in a realm of glorious sensation, she inched lower. Fine hairs began where his shirt parted. Her mouth explored their texture, sampling him with barely leashed hunger. His skin bore a faintly musky smell, very healthy, very male. Eyes closed, she savored it, breathing deeply, losing herself. After everything she’d lived with—and without—for too many years, this sensual delirium was heaven.
“Oh, babe,” Ryan groaned thickly, burying his face in her hair. It seemed he’d been waiting forever to touch her this way. His hands roamed in ardent progression, leaving her breasts to trace the curve of her hips and thighs, returning to learn more of her womanly grace. He found her nipples hard even through the material shielding them. Encouraged by her small whimpers, he rubbed them with his thumbs. “God, I need you,” he rasped. “You’re so special, so special….”
Consumed by the pleasure of the moment, Carly barely heard his words. Never in her life had she known this kind of fire. She’d been a virgin when she’d come to Matthew, and he’d been her teacher, her mentor in every sense. He’d acquainted her with her body and its capabilities, yet he’d always seemed older, more knowing than she was. As lovely as it was, there had been something onesided about their lovemaking; Matthew had been the masterful leader, Robyn the delighted follower.
It was Ryan who sought her as a partner, an equal. His intense need fueled the flame that drove her on.
Pressing kisses to his chest, she released first one button, then another and another, until his shirt was open to his waist. Tugging his shirttail from his pants, he watched, entranced, as she slid the last button from its hole and gave her fingers access to his flesh. They wandered restlessly, delighting in discovery. She spread her palms over an expanse of firm muscle, moving them in erotic circles while her mind spun dizzily. His ribs expanded with each labored breath; his stomach was lean and hard. The pelt of hair, broader, then tapering, lured her senses again and again in agonizing temptation.
Ryan needed her; her touch set him afire, sending live currents to a gathering point in his groin. In a bid to ease the ache, he shifted her to her back and moved down over her. When her arms encircled him, he held himself on an elbow and impatiently tackled the small buttons at her throat with his free hand.
Hot and constricted, tormented by desire, Carly welcomed the air that met her flesh. She arched closer to Ryan, seeking the feel of his hard length against her, simultaneously shocked and exhilarated by his throbbing, his outer show of all she felt inside.
Breathlessly she cried his name, only vaguely aware that her dress lay half open, though she was acutely conscious of the hands that forayed within its soft wool folds. His strong fingers were electric, sizzling her breasts, her ribs, her waist. Then he lowered his mouth and nibbled hungrily at her flesh, whispering her name, lifting her higher.
Greed surfaced; he couldn’t get enough of her. His lips savaged the silk of her bra, the lace at its top, finally the turgid bud at the center of her breast. In unison they moaned, Carly as wild with need as he. His fingers fumbled with her bra’s front catch, released it, peeled the fabric to either side. He buried his head between her breasts, turning it this way and that as though to devour all of her at once.
The brush of his beard against her flesh was new and infinitely arousing to Carly. Thrusting her fingers into his hair, she urged him on, seeking to ease her ache. But there was only fire, and it raged hotter. When his mouth closed over her nipple she cried out, then sobbed softly as the tip of his tongue pebbled it and his teeth took it ever so devastatingly in fever-provoking love play. Her hips began to move, undulating in instinctive response to his tentative thrusts.
“Ryan! My, God!” she whimpered, each shuddering breath feeding the flame.
His rasping response fanned it all the more. “Oh, babe!”
Displaced by gentle writhings, Carly’s skirt was wrapped high around her thighs. Angling himself just enough, Ryan slid a hand beneath it, along the silken expanse leading home. Arriving with precision, he shaped his palm to her, groaning his desire when she bent her knee in welcome.
His vibrant caress, though, provided only brief solace. Aroused to a state of near oblivion, she strained against him, needing far more than even the thinnest silk bonds allowed. When he sought the waistband of her panty hose, she sucked in her stomach to show him the way. He needed little guidance. Her heat was a potent beacon. His fingers drew tiny circles on her skin, working downward, probing deeper.
Carly squeezed her eyes shut and gasped. Then, while her pulse raced out of control, he opened her, found her moisture and began to stroke it.
Suddenly she was scorched. Flames surrounded her. She could barely breathe.
Reacting as one being burned alive, she stiffened. Images from the past arose with a raging vengeance, a redhot conflagration threatening to engulf her. In a panic, she grabbed fistfuls of his hair to pull him away, then screamed in utter terror.
“No! No! My God, don’t!”
Ryan went rigid. His breath came in great gasps. His head brought painfully up by the force of Carly’s hands, he stared down at her, uncomprehending at first, then disbelieving, then with a stark terror of his own. Her eyes were wide, panic filled, unfocused and sightless. She was in another world, another time, experiencing an abject horror that stabbed his gut with ice.
“Carly?” he whispered hoarsely. “Carly! It’s me. It’s Ryan. Carly!” Frantic at the sight of such raw pain, he only knew he had to get her back. His hand trembled as he lifted it to stroke her cheek. “It’s all right, Carly,” he murmured shakily. “It’s all right.”
Her eyes shifted to his then, and she blinked. Tiny creases puckered her brow. Her fingers slowly released his hair. Her hands fell to his shoulders. She swallowed hard.
Yes, there’d been fire. First from Ryan’s heat, then, in a flashback so startlingly intense that her skin felt blistered. But there was more. There had to be. A deep-seated fear of closeness, of commitment. A subconscious realization that, after months of hiding, years of avoiding intimacy, she just wasn’t ready.
Helplessly she began to shiver. Her eyes filled with tears and Ryan thought he’d die. Sitting up, he took her into his arms and held her tightly, burying her face against his chest, absorbing the silent sobs that shook her. She felt chilled to the bone now, a far cry from the heat of moments before. Heartsick, Ryan could only hope to share his warmth.
“It’s all r
ight, sweetheart,” he murmured, the ache of unfulfillment quickly forgotten. He rocked her ever so slowly and pressed his cheek to her hair. He didn’t try to caress her, simply offered his best shot at comfort.
It worked. Her tears slowed, then stopped. She sniffled and eased herself back from him, chin tucked low, fists clutched knuckle to knuckle holding her dress closed.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered raggedly. “So sorry….” She shook her head in dismay, but a strong finger tipped it up.
“Don’t be,” Ryan said, holding her moist gaze with the gentleness echoed in his voice. “It’s all right. You were frightened. That’s all. Maybe it happened too fast.” Even as he said the words, he knew they were simplistic. She wasn’t a virgin, and nothing she’d ever said had led him to suspect that her husband had mistreated her in any way. But he’d seen that distant look in her eyes—and not for the first time. He wondered if she’d been raped, perhaps recently. Yet he couldn’t make himself ask.
She lowered her eyes. “Too fast. It was. I wasn’t prepared.” But that, too, was false. He had felt her body’s most intimate response. Still he didn’t argue. “I didn’t expect….”
Her words trailed off, and she shuddered with the aftershock of terror that shot through her. No, she hadn’t expected it. She wouldn’t have believed it possible for the past to intrude that way. Well, she’d told Ryan that he didn’t know half of it. Maybe now he’d think twice before pursuing her.
It didn’t quite work that way. Later that night, lying sprawled in his bed, his arms pillowing his head, Ryan ran through the events of the evening. With the exception of that final debacle, it had all been wonderful. He’d been proud to be with Carly at the restaurant. He’d enjoyed her company from the first. She was warm and receptive, interesting and interested, poised, playful and very, very pretty.
And she had a past. But he’d known that. She’d warned him at the start when she’d said she wasn’t free. He hadn’t been discouraged then; he wasn’t discouraged now.
With a smile he recalled how gallantly she’d pulled herself together after what had happened on the couch. Her struggle had been obvious. But she’d done it. She’d adjusted her clothing as he’d watched, had finger-combed her hair and, blushing, swiped at the last of the tears on her cheeks. She hadn’t moved far from him, as though she truly wanted to stay. Miraculously they’d even eaten the dessert that had been witness to their sensual disaster. Disaster? Hell, no. Right up to that last heart-wrenching moment, she’d been his ideal. She still was. If there were hang-ups to overcome, they’d do it together. For the battle, their relationship would be that much more precious.
For a moment he frowned. Was he a starry-eyed idealist, recklessly dreaming dreams destined never to come true? Perhaps, he admitted with a hard swallow. But he couldn’t deny the dreams any more than he could deny his feelings. Carly Quinn had a place in his future. He’d find that place, or be damned.
One floor above, Carly lay pondering many of the very same issues. She flipped restlessly from side to side, finally switching on the light and going into the bathroom for a drink of water. Above the sink, the mirror reflected her image. She stood and stared, amazed at how different she looked without the contacts that turned her blue eyes gray. She rarely removed them; they were long-wearing lenses. But the evening’s tears had irritated her eyes and she hoped to give them a rest.
Smoothing her hair back from her cheeks with a hand at either side, she studied those vivid blue eyes with which she’d faced the world for more than twenty-nine years. Strange sensations stirred within. She felt momentarily suspended, caught between two worlds. In the mirror was Robyn, so familiar yet distant. She let her hair fall back into waves. Here was Carly, newer, yet with definite merit.
With a frown, she turned from the mirror, padded back to bed and switched off the light. Her problem, she decided, was in trying to cling to Robyn. As usual, Sam was right. She couldn’t be both. She had to release the past. But it was easier said than done.
Realizing she hadn’t taken her drink, she bobbed up and flicked the light back on, grabbed a pair of oversize tortoiseshell glasses from the nightstand and put them on, then headed for the kitchen this time and warmed a cup of milk in hopes that it would help her relax. Her mind and her body were too keyed up to sleep. Perversely she put the blame on Ryan’s coffee, which, as he’d promised, had been good enough for seconds.
She returned to bed with the cup of milk in hand, propped herself against the pillows and sipped the warm liquid. But her thoughts remained jumbled and, try as she might, she couldn’t chase the furrows from her brow.
Sensing that sleep was a long way off, she reached for her needlepoint, a new canvas she’d bought just that morning, and spread it flat on the bed. It was a simple scene, an abstraction of whites and browns, blues and grays, a modern depiction of what she imagined to be a typical New England winter. She wasn’t quite sure why she’d fallen for the scene. In the past she’d preferred warmer ones, such as the wheat field of gold she’d just finished for her father, or more vivid tones, such as those splashing from the multitude of pillows in her bedroom, or canvases with elaborate detail, such as those with the intertwining of family members’ names that she’d given in past years to each of her brothers.
Her glasses slid down her nose. Absently pushing them up, she studied the new piece. It was more calm, more peaceful. It appealed to her need for serenity, perhaps represented a certain acclimatization. What little she’d seen of New England she liked; perhaps it would truly be home one day.
Threading her needle with a strand of steel gray Persian wool, she began working on the roof of the free-form cabin in the woods and imagined it done up inside with bold burgundys or navys, with sectionals from wall to wall, with rya rugs on the floors, and, yes, a tall fig tree at the window facing south.
Sighing in exasperation at the direction of her thoughts, she put the canvas down in her lap and looked up. Ryan’s face was foremost in her mind, and with it a world of conflicting emotions. Biting her lip, she raised canvas and needle and applied another diagonal row of stitches, tore half of them out when she realized the tension of the wool was uneven, then dropped the work again and stared at the far wall in frustration. Rolling the canvas loosely, she leaned over to toss it into its basket. Her glasses clattered to the nightstand. She flipped the light off.
Forty minutes later, it was on again and Carly was sitting in the middle of her bed, emotionally exhausted but unable to sleep. Her mind was in a state of turmoil—I want him, I want him not, I need him, I need him not. How can I, how can I, especially after what happened tonight? One minute she rued the day she’d met him, the next she saw him as the bright light of her life.
With a small cry of confusion, she abandoned bed once more, to seek a measure of peace beneath the pulsating spray of a warm shower. It was, without doubt, relaxing. She stretched, rolled her head around, hoping to ease tension’s grip, and felt generally better when she turned the water off.
Sleep came quickly after that, but it was shallow and troubled. Twice she awoke to squint at the clock. The third time, it was nearly dawn and she found herself tangled in the bedsheets in a cold sweat, with the tail end of an all-too-familiar nightmare horrifyingly fresh in her mind.
Sitting bolt upright, she switched on the light and tried to catch her breath. Fire. So often fire. In one dream she was in its midst; in another, the victim was someone she loved and she stood helplessly outside the flames, screaming, straining at hands that held her, fearing that it had all been her fault, her fault. She didn’t need a psychiatrist to find hidden meanings. It was all very obvious.
Eyes wide, pulse racing, she gave a groan of defeat and got out of bed. She doubted she’d sleep now; it was starting to get light. To lie in bed would only mean further annoyance. Far better to wash up and do something, she decided. After all, it was Sunday. She’d nap later.
With her contacts in place once more and a fresh cup of decaffeinated coffe
e—the last thing her overactive nerves needed was stimulation—she sat on the living-room couch with a stack of exams to correct. She soon put them down, though, for concentration eluded her. Fetching the needlepoint from the bedroom, she began to work.
Yes, it was Sunday. She wondered if she should run, if Ryan would be expecting her. Probably not, after last night, though he’d been ever so kind with a kiss to her brow when he’d finally returned her to her apartment. She wasn’t sure if she could face him again.
It was nearly eight-thirty when the soft knock came at her door. Curled in the corner of her sofa with the needlepoint crushed beneath one limp arm, she barely stirred. Exhaustion had taken its toll. When the knock came again, she slowly emerged from the deep sleep that had eluded her through the night. Stretching, she opened one eye, then both. She raised her head, tried to place what it was that had disturbed her, shot a guarded glance at the door. Heart pounding, she jumped up, then paused, hoping she wasn’t right in her assumption. Perhaps he’d simply go away if she didn’t answer.
Tiptoeing to the door, she peered through the tiny viewer, then closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the cold white metal. True, she could play the coward now, but sooner or later she’d have to face him.
Slowly she opened the door to look up at him. Dressed for running, he wore a long-sleeved all-weather suit. He held a wool cap and gloves in his hand.
He smiled cautiously. His voice was soft. “Hi.” Then he took in her rumpled hair, the redness on her cheeks, the hint of grogginess in her eyes, and his smile faded. “I woke you. God, I’m sorry.”
When she would have denied his charge, she couldn’t. “It’s all right.” Nervously she tucked a handful of wayward curls behind her ear. “I should have gotten up to run. You, uh, you weren’t waiting, were you?”
“I was late myself. I thought I might have missed you.” He studied her too closely for comfort. “You look tired. Didn’t sleep well?”
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