Conquer the Memories

by Jennifer Greene

  Her eyes rested on Craig’s face, studying him pensively. He was leaned back, studying her with equal intensity, a very stark, very male, very hungry sexual promise in his eyes. He was very clearly through talking. He was willing to communicate further about the past lonely weeks, but in other ways.

  The ache in her lower body said she’d already been well loved that day. She didn’t need sex. She did, however, need to see that look in his eyes again. She needed that sweet, monumental relief of knowing they’d talked, that there had never been anything so terribly wrong that they couldn’t solve it together.

  Dip and pull, dip and pull. Craig motioned his willingness to take the oars; she shook her head.

  A kind of silence gripped her, deep inside, absorbing what he’d tried to tell her. Not the words, but the guilt behind them. That he’d blamed himself for wanting her too damn much on a very still, very seductive night in Chicago…that he’d linked that to his right to make love to her…that he’d suffered through a very masculine feeling of failure to protect her-how could she not have known?

  Dip and pull, dip and pull. Always, the man had bolstered and encouraged and abetted every feminine instinct in her. She felt secure about herself as a woman because of him. It had never occurred to her that Craig could possibly doubt himself as a man, or that she could have been so totally oblivious to how important that male role was in their relationship. To him.

  She was suddenly very definitely in the mood to make love again. She had a great deal to show Craig about how she thought of him as a man. A great many imaginative experiments to try that would reinforce that welling love she felt, that would make very clear that they were equal mates in bed, equally sensitive, equally giving, equally…

  Leaning forward, she handed Craig the oars. She had no more time to risk getting all tuckered out. Not when there was a long night ahead, and their cruiser was finally within sight again.

  ***

  Stepping off the plane with Craig just behind her, Sonia scanned the airport crowd for a cigar-smoking, wizened little man with a wrinkled face.

  Charlie found the two of them first; Sonia’s cherry-red dress was impossible to miss. He whipped the cigar out of his mouth as he ambled forward. “Didn’t think the two of you were ever coming back. Well, how was it?”

  Charlie bent a little forward. Not that he was expecting or even wanted a peck on the cheek from Sonia, but she usually insisted on these things. He received a resounding buss and hug besides. Beaming, he grabbed for her flight bag and reached around to hook an arm across Craig’s shoulder. “Looking good, you two. I can hardly wait to hear about the whole trip. You catch any good fish?”

  “Not a one,” Craig admitted.

  “Not one? How could you possibly be anywhere near-” someone bumped into him; he maneuvered aside “-that incredible fishing territory and not catch a single fish?”

  “Nothing was biting, actually,” Sonia said, and added swiftly, “How’re the pups?”

  Charlie gave her a disgusted look, as the three angled through the crowd to the baggage area. “Don’t ask.”

  “Okay.”

  “They tipped over the trash. One teethed on the patio furniture. Another decided he was going to whine outside the door the whole night. Thinks he’s going to be a lap dog, that one. John called from work,” Charlie mentioned to Craig.

  “Hmm?”

  “John. Work. Another problem with that guy from Radoil-”

  Charlie watched, amused, as Craig leaned over his wife and kissed her. The kiss wasn’t long; it wasn’t short either. Sonia was wearing a hat, a wide-brimmed white thing with a red ribbon; she had to hold it on with one hand. And when Craig disappeared into the getting-luggage crowd, she was still staring after him, a faint flush on her cheeks, her fingers still holding the silly hat.

  Charlie cleared his throat. “So you didn’t do much fishing,” he chortled.

  Sonia twirled in his direction, a delightful smile on her lips, almost as red as her dress. “Pardon?”

  “Did you at least see the Gulf? Port-to-port it between marinas?”

  “Well…sort of.”

  “Meet a lot of people?”

  “Not really.”

  “Get a lot of swimming in then?”

  “We did swim. We swam a lot,” she assured him. “Every day.”

  “Somehow I thought the two of you’d be browner than you are. Not that you weren’t plenty tanned when you left home, but after four days of nothing but sun-”

  “It rained,” Sonia improvised swiftly.

  Charlie’s eyebrows innocently vaulted up. “That’s strange. I watched the weather report every day. The whole area was supposed to be hot and dry.”

  “The Gulf gets sudden rains.” Sonia’s eyes nervously sought Craig’s lean form in the crowd. “Lots of them. You’d be surprised.”

  “That’s a shame,” Charlie commiserated.

  “It was,” Sonia agreed.

  “Nothing to do on a boat in the rain.”

  “We played,” Sonia assured him, “a lot of chess.”

  Charlie’s most undignified guffaw startled her. Craig shot her a questioning glance as he returned with their two small bags. Charlie grabbed both, adjusted them with the flight bag he’d already claimed and stumbled ahead of the two of them, still chuckling.

  “I’ve missed him,” Sonia remarked to Craig as he steered her toward the exit with his palm at her back. “I could kill him, but I always miss him when we’re away.”

  “Pardon? I can’t hear you because of that hat.”

  She lifted her head, holding the hat in place again, an amused smile softening her lips. “That doesn’t make rational sense, Mr. Hamilton, that you can’t hear because of a hat. Give us another.”

  “All right.” He took advantage, bending down again to test his lips against hers. The taste was not appreciably different than it had been moments ago. Delicious. The taste of her wasn’t any different, and the feel of her wasn’t any different, but after four days of seeing Sonia naked most of the time, he was having trouble adjusting to his lady fully clothed. The cherry-red linen dress and absurd hat and red-and-white shoes, the flick of mascara on her lashes again, the lingering hint of perfume…he liked it all. And wanted it all off again as soon as possible.

  His lips lingered, until Sonia pulled back with a sassy frown. “You will behave yourself in the airport. That’s the second time in five minutes.”

  “Then let’s get home.”

  But arriving home was so complicated. Charlie talked continuously; the pups demanded attention; Craig had ninety-nine phone calls to return; they had to eat; her mother called; Charlie talked some more…Charlie refused to stop talking. Sonia had to give him three lemonades and tell him countless stories about rainy afternoons before he finally got up to leave around nine, still chuckling.

  “What is wrong with him tonight?” Sonia demanded irritably.

  “He’s on to us.” Craig switched off the light in the kitchen, then trailed Sonia through the hall. “It might have helped if you hadn’t handed him that cock-and-bull story about rainstorms.”

  She unzipped her dress as she walked down the dark hall. “He seemed to expect us to have caught five million fish. What was I supposed to do? Tell him what we really did for four days?”

  In their bedroom, Craig flicked on the dresser lamp, and Sonia savored for an instant the feeling of being home. The Wyoming sun, the car ride through dusty hills, the coming home and the look of the ranch and the feeling of total relaxation didn’t seep through her until her eyes lit on the familiar beamed ceiling and corner fireplace and familiar furnishings of their bedroom.

  Her dress slipped to the floor. She picked it up and wandered toward the closet, her slim form clad in a pale blue satin slip. Behind the closet door, she slipped off her heels and pantyhose, and then peered unobtrusively around the edge of the door.

  Craig’s shirt was already draped over a chair, and he’d removed his shoes and socks. He wa
s still wearing pale gray pants and his eyes were waiting for her and she loved him totally. They’d had four days to renew loving. They hadn’t wasted a single moment.

  “Come out of there.”

  “You’re exhausted and you know it. Quit sounding…impatient,” she ordered him.

  “I am impatient.”

  “You couldn’t be. We were darn near late for the plane because of you!”

  “That was hours ago.”

  “Honestly. A teenage boy at a drive-in movie has more control than you do.” Sonia emerged from the recesses of the closet wearing her best prim and proper expression.

  It was difficult to hold the pose when Craig all but tackled her. His arms snatched her high, like booty; an instant after that her spine bounced on the mattress and Craig followed, his weight unmercifully heavy on top of her.

  “Up, you oaf,” she ordered breathlessly.

  Craig shifted his leg, the one that was in danger of cutting off the circulation in her thigh. His head dipped down, his lips nuzzling at her throat. Just between her collarbones was a little private hollow where her pulse beat out a rhythm when she was aroused.

  She was aroused. He was aroused.

  It was all her fault. He thought he’d had it all. He hadn’t, obviously. Sonia had turned into an irresistibly uninhibited, wanton vixen the past few days. He had the feeling she’d planned some farfetched seductions when she’d signed on for that little cruise, but there was no real explaining the explosive lovemaking that had erupted between them. There was something faintly sinful over falling in love with his wife again after all this time. Particularly when he’d never fallen out of love with her to begin with.

  His teeth nipped at her shoulder. “You called me an oaf. Sweetheart, you’re going to pay for that.”

  “Darn,” she said with mock unhappiness.

  “You’ll be sorry,” he assured her.

  He uncurled one leg from her, simply because he couldn’t get her slip off otherwise. He hadn’t seen her so burdened with clothes in days. There was still more. One lacy pale blue bra that was see-through, he noted as he held it up to the light. Then one pair of pale blue panties that were also see-through, and had a ribbon in the silliest place.

  Sonia snatched the panties from him and tossed them on the floor. “They were on sale.”

  “An X-rated sale.”

  The only way to wipe the smile from his lips was to unsnap his pants. He darned well made the zipper impossible to undo. He just refused to get out of the way; his lips were pressed full on hers and both his palms were trying to claim her breasts, and those breasts were already painfully swollen…

  There was something sinful about falling in love with one’s husband again when one had never fallen out of love with him to begin with. Sin was so nice.

  And Craig was the devil. He’d always been an imaginative lover; somehow he’d managed to drag out of her the most liquid, new, almost frightening responses…

  His lips tugged on one nipple, and then he left her. Standing next to the bed, he shrugged off the rest of his clothes. He took endless more seconds crossing the room to turn off the light.

  “Craig-”

  He turned the light back on. “All of a sudden, you have to see every little thing,” he complained. “Who’s going to have the energy to turn off the light afterward?”

  “You will.”

  “We won’t argue about it,” he said amicably.

  He dropped back on the mattress, but it was a big mattress, and for the moment he didn’t touch her. For the moment he just took in the fevered brightness in her eyes, the glow of lamplight on her bare skin, the rapid rise and fall of her breasts. Those breasts tapered to such a tiny waist. Legs stretched endlessly from there.

  He knew every inch of the territory. He knew the quiver that touched her spine when his lips pressed against her thigh; he knew the sudden restlessness that ached through her body when he held her against him, length to length. He knew the tension that gripped her like strange fever when he pressed his arousal against her, announcing his intention. His intention was to take her. To claim her. To possess her. Hard and fast.

  When he got around to it.

  Sonia was perceptive, and gentle and passionate and loving. The past few days he’d willingly forgotten the ghosts that had haunted him. Sonia was a delightful ghost chaser. Whatever had possessed him to think he could not make love with his wife hadn’t stood a chance.

  In another realm, though, their renewed physical relationship had only intensified certain feelings he had. He loved her, coveted her, cherished her. His protective instincts were ten times more acute than they had ever been. He wanted to weave a silken web around her, to protect her laughter and her softness and the brimming happiness on her face…

  Sonia trembled, feeling his arms reach for her, enfold her, wrap her up against his hard, taut body. Her breasts pressed into his chest; her legs tightened around him. He murmured soft love words in her ear; she couldn’t hear over the wild, sweet thundering of her heart. As he shifted over her, she welcomed him into the core of her, her body surging to meet his with supreme urgency. So rich, so rich…

  Nothing could mar it. She felt the incredible power of woman within her, the power to snare her mate, the richness of giving him back the power of manhood. She felt full to brimming, sexually climbing still higher on one level, lovingly soaring past endless skies on another.

  He exploded within her only seconds after she’d reached the same delicious release. The silence afterward was like the sweet tumbling down of a soft spring rain, all hush and peace. He held on, staying inside her, as her arms remained wrapped around him.

  Her damp cheek rested in the curve of his shoulder. Her husband, her lover, her mate…The world was fine, she knew she would sleep well tonight. Brimming with well-being, she pressed a smile on his chest as a kiss. A stranger had frightened her those long weeks past. Not a man in a park from a forgotten night, but her husband.

  He was a stranger no more. She felt secure and safe and sure again.

  “Sonia?” He tried to shift; she wouldn’t budge. He pressed a lazy kiss at her throat. “I’m too heavy,” he murmured.

  “You just stay right where you are,” she murmured back.

  Chapter 14

  “Have you seen Marina?” Sonia asked her friend’s secretary cheerfully.

  The blonde shook her head with a rueful smile. “She’s been everywhere this morning. You could check downstairs-one shipment was all mixed up-dammit. I know she was expecting you, Mrs. Hamilton…”

  “That’s all right.” Sonia swept past, turned the corner into Marina’s office and viewed the turbulent chaos with an affectionate grin. After plopping a half dozen fabric samples on the floor, she found a seat; after plopping another dozen files neatly next to them, she established a footstool, and settled back in comfort with a magazine.

  A five-foot whirlwind wafted in shortly thereafter with cinnamon hair wisping wildly around her face and glasses propped on top of her head. Marina took one look at Sonia and groaned. “God, take that glow off your face. I can’t stand people looking that happy anywhere around me. I take it the vacation was a good one?”

  “Terrific.” Sonia chuckled. “Where’s your coffee machine?”

  “It used to be two doors down. But it’s probably broken. Everything has broken or gone wrong today. There’s no reason why that should be any different.”

  “Cream or sugar?”

  “I tell you it can’t be working.”

  Sonia returned a few moments later with two cups of coffee. Marina had thrown herself somewhere behind the mounds of paperwork on her desk; Sonia peered over the stacks before setting one steaming cup down.

  “Don’t start,” Marina warned. “If I were a little less chintzy, I’d probably get some extra help around here. But don’t think I don’t know where everything is.” Marina gulped some of the hot brew and settled back with a sigh. “I’ve had better days.”

  “
I get that feeling.”

  “That glow is still on your face,” Marina said glumly, glaring at Sonia as she settled back in the chair. “And no one but you would have dared put those colors together.”

  Sonia chuckled. Her pale violet jumpsuit had had a drab look to it, until she found a pair of violet and leaf-green sandals, then added a leaf-green rope necklace and belt. In bright colors, the blend wouldn’t have worked, but in pastels the two were eye-catching.

  The glow came far more naturally, and like a smug cat with cream, Sonia knew it was there. They’d been home from their four-day cruise for a week. And all that week happiness had been free, like a gift.

  “I refuse to ask if you’ve made any decision about the job, because I can’t take another setback today,” Marina informed her. “So we’ll just drink our coffee. I want to hear about every detail of that vacation of yours, then you will listen to me rant until I calm down-”

  “I think I will take the job, if you can live with my terms,” Sonia said mildly.

  “If that place in Dayton sends me one more batch of mismatched sizes, I’m going to-” Marina set down her coffee cup and leaned forward, skeptical eyes riveted on Sonia. “Terms I can live with. My husband, not always,” she drawled deadpan. “Let’s hear it. I even forgive you for being beautiful.”

  Sonia burst out laughing. “I’m serious, darn it.”

  “And I’m listening.” Marina’s blue eyes abruptly got a shrewd look in them. Business was business, after all.

  “I want to set up your consulting corner, just as we talked about it. I’ll set it up, organize it, staff it and keep a long nose in on your buying choices,” Sonia said frankly. She leaned back in the chair, her chin on her knuckles. “So far not too bad?”

  “I’m waiting for the bad part.”

  “I think I could get the whole project rolling before your fall clothes come in,” Sonia said musingly, “if you’d allow a little extra budget for some additional costs.”