“How could I have been so selfish, so damned blind?” he said, his voice raw and filled with self-recrimination. “If only I’d gone after her when I first had the feeling that something was wrong, maybe it would have made a difference.”
Lindsay recalled his comment a few days ago about learning to trust his instincts. Now it was clear why there had been such intensity in what had seemed to be only a casual remark. One missing piece of the puzzle fell into place.
“What happened?”
“She got lost on the trail, at least that’s what they think happened. What had started out as a light snowfall turned into a raging blizzard,” he began, the haunted look making his eyes darker than ever, the words explaining his reaction to her disappearance from the cabin. Yet another piece of the puzzle clicked into place.
“Everyone else had come back to the lodge, but Alicia had wanted to do one more run. No one could talk her out of it. She dared the others to come with her, but they refused. As soon as they got back to town, they came to tell me she’d gone back up. I practically went out of my mind. I was furious with her friends for letting her go, but I knew they couldn’t have stopped her. Not once she’d made up her mind. I wanted to go after her, but the snow was so bad by then, the official patrols wouldn’t let me. We waited and waited and with every endless minute that passed, I knew that her odds of coming back were diminishing.”
Mark’s voice shook and he was barely controlling the sobs that shook his shoulders. “She died on that damn mountain, all alone.”
Lindsay put her hand on his knee and he took it in his own and held it tightly. This time it was her turn to share her strength with him.
“I left Switzerland as soon as they found her. I buried her back in Vermont so she’d be near her family and then I bought this place. At first I was like a bear in hibernation. I refused to go out, to see anyone. Grace Tynan kept nudging at me until I finally pulled myself together. She didn’t know what had happened, but she was determined not to let me hide away for the rest of my life.”
His lips tilted in a crooked grin. “That woman’s like a nagging old mother hen once she gets something in her mind. One day, after all that pushing and prodding, I just woke up and realized that whether I liked it or not, my life was going to go on. That was the day I started living again. It was also the day I started on the book.
“Velvet Nights is Alicia’s story. It was something I had to tell to save my own soul, but I don’t want to see it on a movie screen, twisted into some sentimental mockery of the way it really was with us.”
Lindsay gazed into his troubled eyes and suggested softly, “You could make sure that didn’t happen.”
He shook his head. “I could, but I won’t. It’s been five years now and it’s time to put Alicia to rest. I knew that the minute I first saw you and realized there were new possibilities, new feelings and that it was time I explored them.”
She nodded, understanding at last at least some of what had been happening between them, certainly understanding how he felt about Velvet Nights.
“I’ll tell Trent there is no deal,” she said softly.
Their eyes met and held, hers filled with compassion and understanding, his filled with renewed life—and desire. Without a word being spoken, Lindsay went into his arms and offered him all of the love she had to give, more love than she’d ever thought herself capable of giving.
He held her cradled in his arms, his hands stroking tentatively, but building brushfires all the same. When his hand slipped under her sweater, his fingers warm and gentle against her already-burning flesh, her breast tensed with anticipation, the nipple hardening. When he touched it at last with a flick of his nail, an exquisite spiral of electricity shot through her.
Through it all his eyes never left hers, and when Lindsay wanted to look away, afraid to let him see her vulnerability, her raw desire, a slight shake of his head stopped her.
“I don’t want your pity,” he said softly.
“Pity is the last thing I’m feeling right now.”
“Are you sure?”
The question seemed to carry a double meaning and Lindsay’s response was immediate and filled with certainty. “Yes. I meant what I said before, Mark. I love you.”
Her lips parted ever so slightly in invitation, and with a ragged sigh Mark took them, gently at first, nibbling, teasing, until Lindsay felt an aching need stir in her abdomen. When his tongue flicked across her lips then slipped inside her mouth like liquid silk rippling across heated flesh, her whole body shuddered and she clung to him.
“Oh, bright eyes, I need you so,” he murmured as his lips brushed across her cheeks, down her neck. His fingers continued to tempt and tease each breast in turn, the lacy fabric of her bra only adding to the delightfully pleasurable friction of his touch. When his hands moved on to roam over the curve of her hip, the length of her legs, her breasts felt bereft, though she hardly noticed because of the new tension he was arousing wherever his fingers caressed.
She had never felt like this before, never known this magical wonder of feeling her body come alive from the inside, of feeling a heat that warmed like sunlight, then exploded into wicked flames that danced along her nerves. All of those unfamiliar yearnings she had felt from the moment she and Mark had met in the airport came into focus here and now in his arms, and she knew that he and he alone could fulfill every passionate dream that she’d ever had and tried so hard to deny.
She wanted to know this powerfully virile body that had drawn her into its forceful magnetic field. She wanted to touch every intriguing inch of rugged masculinity, to experience Mark’s vitality as she had never experienced another man’s. She wanted him to love her, to complete her in the mystical way that a man completes the woman he loves.
“Make love to me, Mark. Take me to your bed and make love to me.”
He shook his head, his dark eyes burning into hers. “No, love. Here. I want to make love to you in the firelight. Your skin glows like pearls in this light,” he said as he reached for her sweater and slipped it over her head. Her bra, jeans and panties followed in a slow, deliberately provocative stripping that had Lindsay trembling. When his hands skimmed over her now, caressing and stroking, her body arched into his touch, demanding more and more intensity, seeking satisfaction without knowing exactly when or how it would come.
She reached for Mark’s clothes, trying to unbutton his shirt with shaking fingers, but he captured her hand and stilled it, sucking gently, provocatively on each fingertip. “Not yet,” he whispered huskily. “Not yet.”
His eyes were dark as night, so dark a woman could lose herself in them had it not been for the little pinpricks of light that teased and taunted like guiding stars as his hands continued their erotic dance over her body. They glided slowly along her legs, paused intimately on her inner thigh and then, almost without warning, flicked across the tiny spot in which so much sensation seemed to be centered.
Lindsay’s eyes widened at the contact and her hips began to move rhythmically as Mark’s fingers played relentlessly across the moist, sensitive flesh. As spectacular as the sensation was, there was an aching emptiness that cried out to be filled. “Mark, please. I want you.”
“Sssh. This is just for you,” he said, intensifying his touch until Lindsay was no longer able to protest. “Let yourself go, bright eyes. That’s it. I want you to feel everything.”
Fire roared through her, exploding into a million colored lights as her body thrashed wildly beneath Mark’s persistent fingers. There were no longer any thoughts of her one-sided vulnerability, no lingering hesitations about giving in to the all-consuming feelings. All rational thought was beyond her now as her body yielded itself to wondrous new sensations. It was only after the rippling waves of excitement calmed that she realized the extent of what Mark had given her. His eyes met hers and she saw that he knew exactly what she was thinking. What had she ever done to deserve a man whose one joy came in giving such pleasure? she wondered.
>
Lindsay turned to him then, and this time when she reached for the buttons of his shirt, he didn’t deny her. She eased his clothes off in the same slow, enticing way he had removed hers, her eyes drinking in the sight of him, all sinew and potent strength. She struggled with his jeans then hesitated tentatively over the removal of his briefs, struck by a sudden uncertainty that vied at the same time with the desire that raged deep inside her once more.
Mark lifted his hips and slid off the pants that had only barely concealed his throbbing masculinity. Instinctively Lindsay’s fingers sought him, reveling in the satin smoothness that shielded a core like white-hot steel. Mark trembled beneath her exploratory touches, his breathing growing increasingly ragged. When he reached for her at last, there was no holding back. They were two people whose needs were evenly matched, whose desires were beyond control. He poised above her only briefly, his gaze holding hers. For the tiniest fraction of a second Lindsay felt a flicker of fear, but it was banished almost before it could register completely in her mind.
She waited expectantly for Mark’s first urgent thrust, then felt a sharp sting of pain that vanished almost as soon as it had begun. She saw the look of surprise in his eyes, the hesitancy, and deliberately arched her hips upward, drawing him into her, filling herself with him, reveling in the perfect fit of his body with hers. Slowly, they adjusted their rhythm and with each point and counterpoint, the tension built, coiling inside her like a spring, which once released would shake them both to their very cores. Mark’s lips sought her breast and his tongue teased the hardened peak until Lindsay could feel the sensation clear down to the tips of her toes. Her fingers dug into his back, then slid down to his hips, pulling him more deeply into her until at last the spring snapped and her body shook with the explosiveness of the sensation.
Mark held perfectly still until her own shudders stopped, then he moved again and again, his muscles taut with tension until finally he, too, trembled, his body covered with a sheen of perspiration.
“I had no idea,” they both said in a sort of dazed wonder.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he murmured, still holding her in his arms, their bodies curved together side by side.
“After everything I told you, I thought you knew.”
“I suppose I should have guessed.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes. It matters.”
Lindsay’s face fell. “Why?”
“Not in that way, bright eyes. I’m just glad I’ll always be the only man you’ve ever had.”
“What does that mean?” she mumbled sleepily.
“Quiet, love. We’ll talk about it later,” he promised, as she settled her head more comfortably in the crook of his shoulder and promptly fell asleep. It was a sleep filled with spectacular dreams, and Mark was at the center of every one of them. With a wildfire of desire warming her from the inside, she didn’t even seem to mind that they were always surrounded by snow.
CHAPTER NINE
“Marry me,” Mark suggested softly in the morning, his arms wrapped tightly around Lindsay, his breath whispering across her bare shoulder, his fingers delicately tracing the curve of her spine. “And if you say one word about this being so sudden, you’re less perceptive than I thought you were.”
Lindsay’s heart turned a somersault, and she wished with everything that was in her that she could say yes. Somehow over the past few days she had fallen deeply, passionately in love with Mark Channing. She knew that with absolute certainty, had known it even before last night’s tempestuous lovemaking that had bound her to him as irrevocably as the snare of a silken spider’s web.
No man had ever made her feel as he had, as though the world were bright and clear and open to all sorts of new and exciting experiences to be shared. She had never known the joy of sharing before, never known what it was like to allow another human being to get so close that he seemed to be a part of her, seemed to know her thoughts practically before she spoke them aloud.
Mark had made her want to explore previously hidden facets of her personality, to seek out thrilling, new adventures. The man had even made skiing tolerable, for heaven’s sakes! He must have a magic touch if he could make snow and icy arctic blasts of wind seem appealing. Well, she corrected, maybe not appealing exactly, but bearable.
But oddly, as certain as she was now of her own feelings, she wasn’t at all sure he was in love with her. Not in the all-consuming, tender way he had loved Alicia. Deep inside she feared that she had just happened along at a time when Mark had decided to end his self-imposed isolation. Never once had he actually said he loved her. Though he had made love to her during the day and, after they had moved to his bed, on into the night with a passion and gentleness that went beyond thrilling to some extraordinary place of enchantment, that was not necessarily the same thing. Even his marriage proposal could have stemmed from loneliness and need, rather than love.
Besides, she told herself as she mentally built a case for resisting the very strong temptation to say yes, she was nowhere near ready to relinquish her own fear of commitment, not after so little time and especially not when she had so many uncertainties about his feelings. What if she lost him eventually? What on earth would she do then? She might be older and wiser than that nine-year-old child who’d suffered irreparable emotional harm over her father’s sudden death, but she was no less vulnerable, no less likely to be torn apart inside.
“Have you fallen asleep on me?” he taunted. “It’s not very flattering.”
“No. I’m wide awake. If I hadn’t been before, your proposal would have done it.”
“Well, then, what’s your answer?”
She hesitated, unable to bring herself to say either yes or no. “Couldn’t we just sort of live together for a while?” she offered tentatively as an alternative, pushing aside the awareness that even that slender tie would put her emotions at tremendous risk. “I mean whenever we can work out something. I do have a job to get back to, after all.”
He regarded her incredulously and his hands stilled in the middle of her back.
“How exactly do we sort of live together, if you’re in Los Angeles and I’m here?”
“Actually I’m hardly ever in Los Angeles. I go all over the world.”
“Which complicates things even more.”
“Not really,” she said, pursing her lips thoughtfully as she weighed the possibilities. “In the long run, that should help. Boulder is sort of in the middle between L.A. and anywhere.”
“And you’ll touch down whenever your route happens to carry you past?” There was an edge of sarcasm in his voice that she chose to ignore.
“Why not? Other people have commuter relationships.”
“Usually when they can’t sustain one at close range,” he suggested dryly.
Lindsay winced, wondering how accurate the offhand remark might really be. She’d never really tried to sustain one at any distance. Still, she responded defensively, “That’s not fair.”
“But I’m hitting pretty close to the mark, aren’t I? You’re afraid to stay here with me full-time, married or not. You’re afraid you’ll start to care too much.”
“I’ve already told you that I love you.”
“Saying the words isn’t enough. If you mean them, then make a commitment.”
“It’s too soon. Besides, you seem to have forgotten how I feel about this climate and the total isolation.”
He leered at her suggestively and one hand slid slowly around until it was cupping her breast, his fingers playing gently with the tip until it tightened into a hard bud and a white-hot core of heat built deep within her. Lindsay gasped involuntarily as a whirlwind of sensations ripped through her anew.
“I’ve always thought isolation was a pretty good thing for newlyweds,” he countered, continuing his sensual assault.
“It probably is...on a honeymoon,” she conceded, trying to wriggle out of the path of his persistent, teasing fingers.
“Mark!”
she said admonishingly.
“Yes.”
“Stop it. You’re not helping anything.”
“I’m just trying to prove a point.”
“So am I.”
“Okay. I think I like mine better, but what’s your point?” he asked grudgingly.
“That sooner or later we’ll have to get back to real life and for you that means writing.”
“So?”
“What am I supposed to do while you write? Sit in a rocker down at the general store next to Jeb and compare notes on the spring seed catalogs?”
“Of course not. You can work, if you want to.”
“Fine. My job is based in Los Angeles and requires extensive traveling.”
“I meant you could work here.”
“Doing what?”
“I don’t know. You’re obviously an intelligent, talented woman. Check the papers.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” she finally exploded in exasperation, jerking the sheet up and wrapping it protectively around her so he could no longer distract her with his roving touch. “I already have a career.”
Mark shrugged indifferently. “I’m not convinced you’re that crazy about it.”
His casual words struck a responsive chord in her and Lindsay wondered if he weren’t closer to the truth than she’d ever admitted to herself. Maybe she’d only been trying to prove something to herself with this crazy job that took her to the ends of the earth and back again, never giving her a minute to herself. Well, she’d been up in more planes than she could count over the last few years, and while she hadn’t exactly conquered her fear of flying, at least she’d learned to live with it.
As for the job itself, was she tired of it? Had she only been using it as an excuse to avoid involvements? Even if she had, she decided stoutly, Mark was not going to force her into making a decision she wasn’t ready to make and she was definitely not prepared to make this one, no matter how strongly she felt about him.
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