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Should she stop this farce, this travesty? No, she couldn’t. Not while she could bury her nose against his shirt and remember how wondrous it had been to do that when she drank in his man scent for the first time. It was still wondrous. He smelled earthy and spicy, awash in pheromones with her name on them. They made her head dance in the clouds, no matter how heavy her heart felt.
He laid her out on the mattress on the floor. The ghost of a giggle welled up inside her. She remembered the last time she’d looked up at him from a mattressonthefloor,whenherricketybedhadgiven way. His face had sported a thundercloud that time.
Now his face showed nothing.
She reached for him, quickly. Desperate, she kissed him. It should have felt warm, wet, and wild. It did feel warm and wet. It felt perfect, if a kiss couldfeelperfectcomingfromarobotwhohadbeen programed to know exactly how to deliver a ten on thescaleofperfectkisses.Butitwasn’tanythinglike a kiss was supposed to be for them.
Van’s tongue tangled with hers in just the way that always excited her. Every stroke against her lips and teeth, every thrust that filled her mouth, coaxed her into aching need. She told herself to stop yearning for what she couldn’t have. She would give herself up to this if this was all he could give her. If she could do that, it might bring him back.
She admired him, she loved him, and all of that poured into her kiss. He groaned. Good. Kissing Van was the Eighth Wonder of the World for her, and she knew it was the same for him. At least, it always had been. In some ways, it still was. If his hunger for her soul was smothered, he was still famished for her body.
One big hand cupped her head to hold her for a deeper kiss while the other trembled on the buttons of her silky blouse. She quivered too as he smoothed the cloud of ruffles away and reached inside her bra.
For long moments, he held her, just held her. It could have been tender. In any normal embrace, in any normal time when they moved together to celebrate their bodies, it would have been tender. This time, though, he held her with rigid control, as though he needed to make her body beg more hungrily than it ever had before.
Sure enough, he wouldn’t let her stay in any kind of control. His teeth clamped on her earlobe, firmly and gently, and she almost lost consciousness. He brushed her yearning nipple with his thumb, deliciously roughened from his work with wood. Liquid fire traced a path from her breast to her ear and back. Van wasn’t here, but his warm, familiar, oh so beloved body was, and she had to have it.
Her legs reached for one of his and wrapped around it, pulling it close, closer, as though it might soothe her fire. It didn’t.
Van smoothed, tugged and pulled until her blouse came off, and then her bra. It was long, aching years until the liquid blaze of his mouth closed over one breast, then the other. He sipped. He sucked. He rolled the tip of his clever tongue over one of her breasts, then the other. A spear of painful pleasure plunged through her.
She tried not to scream, but she had to whimper. She needed him. She needed his body pressed so hard against hers they could become one. This was so sad, and so achingly necessary. If only —
“Shhhh,” he whispered, pulling away and smoothing her hair back from her face, fingering the strands as though they were filaments of molten gold.
He made their clothes disappear. She didn’t know how. She didn’t care how, as long as they were gone, as long as they stopped being a barrier between her and the detonation her body burned to reach. The tangled sheets beneath them picked up the damp of their passion.
Only a whisper of his gentleness was still there, along with the need. It was one of the things she had always loved him for, that gentleness. He had so much to give when he could let his guard down. It wasn’t down now, and his giving was on a whole different plane.
“Lie back,” he said. “Stay still. I want to watch you while I make you explode.”
He pinned her shoulders lightly to the bed. He stroked her, his fingertips skimming her body with trickles of fire, starting at the corner of her mouth, dancing down her neck and back up to her ear — stop. No, don’t stop. More, please more. His mouth moved to her breasts, her navel, her tangle of curls lower still. Her body arched, reaching for the touch sheknewwascoming,theonesheknewwouldmake her sob with mindless pleasure.
Finally, at long last, he completed the touch, his fingers stroking and circling, and one slipped inside her to stroke and circle while the heel of his hand pressed where the flames were building. In one wordless burst, she exploded like a vault in a bank robbery. His hand pressed and his fingers danced and he stayed with her for every glorious step, through every time she thought she had to fall back to earth, limp and replete and exhausted, but he coaxed her to yet another series of contractions that drove her farther into pure, white-hot sensation, again and again.
Atlast,shehadtopushhimaway,atleastasmuch as her now-boneless body could make any motion at all. “Oh. My. Lord,” she said.
He grunted with satisfaction.
He was long and thick and hard and satin against her. She tried to pull him over on top of her, inside of her.
“Shhhh,” he murmured again. “Lie back.”“Oh, no, I can’t.”
“Yes, you can.”
He stretched out beside her. His hands were still on her, warm and stroking and coaxing, then they faltered,withsosmallahesitationshewouldn’thave caught it if she hadn’t known his dear body so very well.
“I know you’re going to leave me.”
The words landed on her ears with a dull crash. Her whole body jerked as the words slowly trickled through to her brain. At first, she couldn’t fathom what they meant.
Finally, she examined her own heart, and realized whathehadsaidwastrue.Shemighthavebeenable to keep on living with him shutting her out, but now he’dfounditnecessarytoshutoutthedogstoo.That made it so much harder to keep on fooling herself.
This would never work. She didn’t know how to live likethis.Shedidn’tknowhowtowatchhimdoingthis to himself and the people, two-legged or four-, who loved him.
Trust. Where had it gone? She didn’t know, but she didknowshecouldnolongertrusthimtobetheman she had loved.
She was going to be the first woman in her family for generations, as far back as anyone could remember, to walk out on her man.
