In the bathroom, Teague set Joanna down hard on the lid of the toilet seat and started hot water running in the huge claw-foot tub they’d bought at an estate sale and had refurbished.
“What are you doing?” Joanna asked before sneezing.
Teague crouched in front of her, and pulled off her wet shoes, peeled away her socks. “Trying to keep you from catching pneumonia,” he said, “and I’d appreciate a little cooperation!” He stood and stepped back. “Get naked, get in the tub, and soak until you feel warm. I’m heading for the kitchen.”
Joanna sniffled. She felt like a first-class fool, sitting there on a toilet, soaked to the skin. What had she been thinking, running in the rain like that?
But that was just it. She hadn’t been thinking. She’d been feeling, and it had hurt too much. She’d tried to outrun the pain, foolishly, desperately. And it was still with her.
Better get used to it, she thought. This is your life, Joanna Darby. From now on.
Teague was gone before she got around to wondering what he intended to do in the kitchen. She undressed and stepped into the steaming tub, wincing at the heat of the water, welcome as it was.
Maybe, she reflected with grim amusement, sinking to her chin, she ought to drown herself.
Teague returned a few minutes later, carrying a cup of something hot. “Drink this,” he said, shoving it at her.
It was a hot toddy, stout on the brandy side.
Joanna sipped.
Teague plopped down on the toilet-seat lid. He was soaked and shivering a little, but he appeared not to have noticed.
“That was a stupid trick,” he said.
“Thank you for that insight,” Joanna replied thickly. Oh, great. Her sinuses were already clogging up.
The lights flickered, went out, and came on again, but tentatively.
“You’d better get into this tub while we still have hot water,” Joanna said. She’d always been the practical one.
The bathroom door was open a crack, and Sammy stuck his snout in, whining.
“At least he’s dry,” Teague said, stripping.
Sammy retreated, padding off down the hall again.
Joanna sat up a little straighter, pulling her legs back and crossing them so Teague could fit in the other end of the tub, facing her. His lips were blue, and his teeth were chattering slightly.
Joanna extended the cup to him, and he took a sip, but grudgingly.
“Why didn’t you make one for yourself?” she asked.
“Somebody has to stay sober around here,” he grumbled. “Not to mention sane.”
She giggled, and the sound was a congested snort.
“I don’t want to sell this cottage,” she said, lifting the mug in a sort of defiant toast.
“Yes,” Teague said, “I gathered that.”
“The water’s getting cold,” Joanna remarked thickly. “Turn the spigot marked H, please.”
“Thanks for the highly technical instructions,” Teague said, but he turned, his fine butt making a scooching sound on the bottom of the big tub, and hot water flowed. “Does it bother you that my ass is getting scalded?” he inquired.
“Not at all,” Joanna said.
Grumbling, he shifted so he was sitting with his back to Joanna. He slid back against her and she had to straighten her legs to keep her kneecaps from snapping.
“You’re squashing me,” she complained.
“Too bad. I’m not going to parboil my butt by turning around.”
Joanna laughed. “How much brandy did you put in this toddy?” she asked.
“Enough,” Teague answered with a sigh.
She set the cup on the wide brim of the tub, where they used to burn candles, back when bathing together meant having aqua-sex. Then, a little drunk, she slid her hands around to the front of his chest and played with his nipples.
He groaned.
She stroked his taut belly.
He sat up a little straighter, the muscles in his back and shoulders hard with tension.
She took hold of his cock.
He gasped. “I think I should—shut off the water—”
“But then I’d have to let go of you,” she said sweetly.
“As much as I hate that idea—your letting go of me, I mean,” Teague choked out, “the tub is going to overflow.”
Reluctantly, she released him.
He shut off the flow of hot water and turned, facing her, kneeling now. He was huge, rigid.
Magnificent.
Joanna sat up. She took Teague into her hands, then into her mouth, savoring him, teasing him with the tip of her tongue.
He clasped the edge of the tub with one hand, burying the other in Joanna’s hair.
And he murmured her name.
She worked him harder.
He groaned again, struggling to hold himself still, to hold himself back.
Joanna was taking no prisoners. She nipped him lightly, and he tensed and gave a ragged, raspy cry. When she began to suck again, he suddenly grasped her head in both hands and drew out of her mouth.
“Teague?”
“If you keep doing that, I’m going to come.”
She kept doing that.
And he came.
She stayed with him until he stilled, dropped to his haunches in the cooling bathwater, breathing almost as hard as before his orgasm.
He sagged forward onto her, and they lay still in the big tub, Joanna’s hands stroking his shoulders.
In the distance, the telephone began to ring.
“Ignore it,” Teague pleaded.
“It might be Caitlin,” Joanna said. “What if something’s wrong?”
Teague got up, stepped out of the tub, wrapped a towel around his waist, and tossed another towel to Joanna.
By the time she caught up to him in their bedroom, he was just hanging up the phone.
“Is Caitlin all right?” Joanna asked anxiously.
Teague grinned. “As far as I know,” he said. “That was somebody selling vinyl siding. We qualify for the V.I.P. rate. At least, that’s what I think he said. He was calling from Pakistan, so I’m not really sure.”
Joanna stood still in the doorway, barely covered by her towel.
In the living room, Sammy gave a loud snore.
“Come here,” Teague said, his gaze smoldering as he dragged it from her feet to her face.
And before she knew she’d moved, Joanna was standing in front of Teague and he was relieving her of the towel.
Four
“Sex,” Joanna said sagely, when she recovered her power of speech, “is not the solution to our dilemma.”
Teague, lying beside her in the tangle of bedding, hauled her on top of him and chuckled. “You couldn’t prove it by me,” he said. “Right now, I’m wondering what ‘our dilemma’ is, exactly.”
Outside, the wind howled around the edges of the cottage and rattled the glass in the windows.
Joanna knew she ought to withdraw from him, get out of bed, get dressed, but there was a disconnect between her mind and the corresponding muscles. She’d melted, that was the problem. “We don’t talk when we’re having sex,” she said, idly winding a finger in a strand of Teague’s hair.
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” Teague suggested. “Maybe words get in the way of what we’re really trying to say to each other.”
“I don’t see how we can settle anything if we don’t talk,” Joanna replied. “But I’m intrigued by the theory.” She reached under the covers and closed her hand around him, pleased that he was getting hard again.
Teague gave a low moan.
Joanna slipped beneath the covers, kissing her way down Teague’s chest and belly.
But he drew her up before she reached her intended destination. And then, in a rolling motion of his body, he turned both himself and Joanna so that she was on her hands and knees in the middle of the mattress and he was behind her.
Joanna closed her eyes as heat surged through her, and instinctively gri
pped the rails in the headboard with her fingers.
Teague, already pressing against her, began caressing her breasts, one and then the other, delicately rolling her nipples between his fingers.
Now she was the one moaning.
He teased her with the moist tip of his cock even as he eased her thighs apart.
“Do it,” she whispered.
He bent, kissed her nape, the bones in her spine. “Do what?”
Joanna groaned out a long, needy “Ooh—”
“Do what?” Teague repeated, tracing the lines of her shoulder blades with the tip of his tongue.
“Fuck me,” she said.
“Don’t you want to—talk?”
“Fuck me,” she repeated, grinding against him, shameless in her need.
He found the entrance to her vagina and slammed into her in a low, hard thrust that made her throw back her head and give a guttural cry.
“Harder,” she pleaded. “Oh, Teague—harder—”
He toyed with her clitoris, still inside her, filling her.
She reached the first sharp orgasm, and Teague’s control shattered. He gripped her hips to steady her and fucked her in earnest, hard and fast and deep.
She gloried in the furious friction as he pounded into her, possessing her, ravishing her, like a wild storm that would not be stilled until it had spent itself.
They met in the whirlwind, their bodies fully joined in one final, shuddering collision of consuming fire.
Joanna came repeatedly, softly, all during the deliciously slow descent, Teague still grasping her hips, still moving in and out of her, though more gently now. He knew, damn him, how to extract the last, quivering release from her, how to melt the very marrow of her bones.
She sagged, exhausted, to the mattress.
He rested on top of her, his forearms braced on either side of her shoulders.
A long, long time passed before either of them spoke.
“Joanna,” Teague said, “I don’t think this divorce is working out.”
She giggled, crying at the same time, crushed flat beneath him.
He raised himself, turned her over, and looked deep into her eyes.
She crooned and stretched, limp with satisfaction. “I could sleep for a month,” she murmured.
“If I planned to let you,” Teague said. And he slid down a little to suck idly at her breasts. “Which I don’t.”
“All this sex—it’s—”
“Good,” Teague finished for her, taking her nipple into his warm mouth and drawing upon it until she groaned.
There was no denying that. But then, sex had always been good with Teague. In recent years, though, it had been mechanical—both of them climaxed because they knew each other’s bodies so well, but it was as if a part of them remained untouched. Though satisfying, the whole experience was oddly detached—clean, safe, dignified.
Or, at least, it had been that way—until this weekend.
Normally, Joanna despised the word “fuck”—it was crude. She preferred the term “lovemaking,” because it was more sedate, more acceptable. The intimate version of a handshake.
But this time, in this bed, she hadn’t wanted Teague to make love to her. She’d wanted him to fuck her, full out, no holds barred, and he surely had.
She’d missed that.
She’d missed Teague.
The old Teague. The one who’d come home sometimes, in the middle of the day, while Caitlin was in school and the housekeeper was off on some errand, and had Joanna wherever he happened to find her: bending her over the washing machine, the back of the couch, even the dining-room table. It hadn’t been lovemaking—it had been good old-fashioned fucking, and she’d reveled in it. Reveled in orgasms so intense she shouted and howled and begged.
Tears seeped between her lashes.
Teague raised his head from her breasts, sensing the change in her mood. Kissing the wetness off her cheeks.
“What is it?” he asked hoarsely.
Joanna wrapped her arms around his neck and allowed herself to do something she’d sworn off long ago, for the sake of dignity, because they were grownups, with a child to raise and a business to manage. She clung. “Why can’t it always be like this?” she whispered.
Teague chuckled. “Well, primarily because it would probably kill both of us,” he said. He wriggled against her. “Eventually.”
“Can we just stay here? Not go back to Seattle at all?”
Teague blinked, confused.
“I mean it,” Joanna said. “Why does this have to end?”
He kissed her, with his eyes open and full of puzzlement.
More tears came, tickling Joanna’s temples, rolling into her ears. “Do we have to divide things up and go our separate ways?” she asked. “Do we really have to?”
Teague swallowed hard. “Are you just saying that,” he asked gruffly, “because you want my body?”
“I’m saying it because I want you, Teague.” She smiled, squirming a little to tease him. “Although your study body is a definite plus.”
His eyes were wet. “God, Joanna, I love you. I always have. I guess I just forgot how to tell you, how to show you—”
“Shh,” she said, lifting her head to kiss him. “You’re not the only one who forgot. I did, too. Do you think we could try again?”
Teague laughed hoarsely. “That depends. If you’re talking about another session like the one we just had, I need a little time. I’m almost a grandfather, you know. If you’re talking about the marriage, it’s an unequivocal yes.”
“Think we can get it right?”
“I think we’ll make a lot of mistakes, and get it right most of the time.”
“Sounds sensible,” Joanna said softly, stroking the side of his wonderful face with a slow motion of one index finger. “I’d like to suggest one ground rule, though.”
“What’s that?”
“If one of us decides to leave, the other one gets the dog.”
Teague grinned. “Deal,” he said.
And then he kissed her in a very ungrandfatherly way.
One month later
Joanna looked up from her computer, watching through the front window as Teague and Sammy came up from the beach, Sammy as spry as a pup now that he was getting a lot of fresh air, attention, and exercise, Teague relaxed and happy, with sawdust on his jeans. He spent mornings in the garage behind the cottage, working on his boat, while Joanna worked on her novel.
Today, she had a surprise for him.
“Hello, Gramps,” she said as he and Sammy came in, bringing a pleasant summer breeze with them.
Teague crossed to bend and kiss her.
“What do you say I fuck your socks off while Sammy takes his nap?” he asked.
She grinned. “Bend me over something,” she said. “I’m all yours.”
His eyes glowed with anticipation and mischievous plans as he pulled her to her feet.
“But first,” she said, “there’s something I have to tell you.”
He frowned. “Caitlin’s all right?”
“Caitlin’s fine—I talked to her an hour ago. She’s over the morning sickness, and she and Peter are coming for a visit in a couple of weeks.”
“That’s good news,” Teague said, sliding a hand up under Joanna’s T-shirt and bra to cup her breast.
“There’s more,” Joanna said, tugging his hand from her breast—much as she’d loved being fondled—and gripping it in her own. “Come with me.”
“The bedroom?” Teague murmured. “Not very imaginative.”
“The bathroom,” Joanna said, pulling him along behind her.
“Not very romantic.”
“You seemed to like it well enough yesterday when I gave you a blow job while you were trying to shave,” Joanna reminded him sweetly.
A slow grin spread across his face. “Oh—yeah.”
“Forget it, Gramps,” Joanna said. “This isn’t about getting you off.”
“Damn,” Teague said
, disappointed.
They’d reached the bathroom doorway, and the kit Joanna had bought at the supermarket a week before but been afraid to use lay on the counter next to the sink.
“What—?” Teague murmured, clearly confused.
Joanna picked up the stick and showed him the little plus sign in the window.
His expression was priceless as it went from bafflement to possibility to realization.
“We always said we wanted more kids,” Joanna said.
He stared at her. “But I’m—you’re—we’re—”
“Almost grandparents,” Joanna supplied.
“A baby, Joanna?” His eyes were alight with joy, with hope, with ecstatic amazement.
All the things she’d hoped for.
“A baby,” she confirmed.
He threw back his head and shouted. Then he lifted Joanna off her feet, squeezing her so tightly she couldn’t get her breath for a moment. His face was a study in fatherly concern as he loosened his grip.
“A baby?” he marveled. “After all this time?”
“After all this time,” Joanna said softly.
“How did—?”
“I suppose it was the fucking,” she answered.
He laughed.
“But it was also fate, probably,” she added. Spending these weeks virtually alone with Teague, she’d begun to see that there was something beyond the things they said to each other, ordinary or incendiary. There was a space, a magical silence, almost meditative and certainly sacred, where words simply could not reach.
And there, with not only their bodies but their souls joined, this new baby had been conceived.
Teague looked worried. “Have you told Caitlin?”
“Of course I haven’t,” Joanna said. “I wanted you to be the first to know.”
“We’d better get you to a doctor.”
“Right now, this instant? I feel fine, Teague. Better than fine.”
“But you need to be on special vitamins and have sonograms and stuff. Joanna, we have to do this right.”
She stood on tiptoe, wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him. “I’ve already called our doctor, and she referred us to an OB-GYN guy. My appointment is tomorrow morning at ten.”
Teague huffed out a relieved breath, but his eyes were troubled. “Joanna, you’re—we’re—not young. There could be problems.”
“There can always be problems, Teague. And these days, a lot of people are having healthy babies in their forties.”
Sun, Sand, Sex Page 5
