Conquer the Memories

“The first time, unfortunately, it’s going to go fast,” he said gently. “Not the second time. The second time, we’ll take it nice and slow. Then we’ll have lunch. After lunch you can nap. And after you nap, we’ll be tired of mattresses, Sonia, and we can go for a swim. We’re going to do a complex study of friction in salt water. Body friction-it’s going to be an in-depth study…You’re not drinking your coffee,” he chided gently.

Hurriedly, she took another sip. Actually, she downed the cup.

His legs hooked around the rungs of her stool; he leaned closer with his palms spread on her thighs. “When you bought that red bikini you wore yesterday, you must have been in an inciting-violence kind of mood. I hate to say this, honey, but it’s your own damn fault the first time is going to go too fast.”

She nodded. Everything was her fault. She would gladly have taken responsibility for the earth caving in. Who cared? She hadn’t heard that sound in his voice in weeks. That unmistakable I’m-going-to-take-you tone.

“You want me to tell you how much I want you?” His voice was gravelly, almost pained, trying to be light, trying to be humorous.

She set down her cup. She wasn’t smiling. “Want me, then,” she whispered vibrantly.

“How on earth could you doubt it?”

In a twinkling, he gathered her up. The stools teetered behind them. His mouth pressed on hers as if he were totally unaware her neck could snap from that kind of pressure; his length to her length seared into one. Air was forgotten. Breathing was forgotten. His hands were running up and down her spine, his fingers finally closing around her hips, crushing her to him.

His lips lifted from hers long enough to trail more heated kisses on her cheeks, down to her throat. “But what has been wrong, then?” Sonia whispered achingly. “Craig…”

The T-shirt muffled her words. Her T-shirt. In a moment, it went soaring over her head; his palms skimmed down her white shorts, and he lifted her to get her out of them. She didn’t argue. His lips crushed down on hers again with a bruising pressure, a bruising sweet, sweet pleasure. So rough…Craig had never been rough. And the drowning hunger of his lips ignited a sweet, fierce hunger in her as well.

He carried her up a step and then another. She felt like laughing for the first time in weeks. The bed couldn’t have been thirty feet away, that gorgeous stateroom set up with satin sheets and opaque curtains and soft pillows. But he placed her on the carpet, and through the slits in the curtains the morning sun was blinding…at least for that instant before Craig’s head dipped down to hers again.

She tried to draw back for a brief gulp of air. He wouldn’t let her. His tongue slid inside her parted lips, a busy, busy tongue informing her without words that she didn’t need to breathe.

He was absolutely right. She needed that arrogant tongue. She needed the feel of his chest and his heartbeat crushing her breasts; she savored his impatience as he finally pulled away to peel off his jeans.

His flesh was so warm, all taut and strained, yet giving beneath her stroking palms. Such a rage of love she felt for him. His limbs were tangled with hers, oddly awkward when they’d played the game so many times. It didn’t matter. His need, his desire, communicated itself to her, and she accepted his love as if it were riches. Her unselfish lover radiated desire; she invited his selfishness. Her fingers curled around him, and she rejoiced at the sound of his gasp of pleasure.

“Don’t,” he hissed softly. “Sonia, if you touch me-”

He would explode. The warning was implicit, but she touched him anyway. One finger lightly traced the shape of him, and then her palm curled around his pulsing warmth.

He brushed her hand away, but she felt the tremor that shook his body. His head bent, and she saw the faint sheen of moisture on his temples, that coat of sensuous moisture like silk on his shoulders. His lips traced the line from her throat to her breasts. Her nipples were already taut for the wash of his tongue, yet a helpless shiver vibrated through her when his teeth gently grazed the sensitive flesh.

She felt a rush of sheer sexual pleasure, but that wasn’t the main cause of the trembling inside her. Mr. Hamilton was out of control. It was about time. Only, darn it, so was she.

Her fingertips danced over heated skin, down the muscled curve of his shoulders to his spine to his taut buttocks, finally resting on his thighs. He twisted. Such an impatient body, such exploding need. Plush carpet pressed into her spine, abrasive, ungiving. Sun poured on her eyes, and she lowered her lids. The flesh of his neck was so vulnerable; her lips whispered over it, so very gently; her teeth nuzzled, so very gently…

“Sonia, if you don’t stop…”

She had no intention of stopping. The damn boat was welcome to sink. Her lover was back. For some crazy reason, his lips were sinking from breasts to ribs to navel. The silly man was obviously still concerned with her pleasure.

“Come to me,” she whispered throatily. “Craig, I want my legs around you-I want to feel you inside me. Don’t wait. Don’t wait…”

For an instant, the searing images exploded in his head again. The man with light eyes, the darkness, that instant when Sonia’s eyes sought him out, desperately wanting and needing and expecting him to save her, that instant when he’d never felt more impotent, more helpless, his failure…The images were real; they had been real for weeks, as real as if it had all just happened.

“No,” Sonia whispered fiercely. “You’re not doing that to me again, dammit. Or to yourself. Look at me, Craig.”

Her palms framed the sides of his face. She wanted to kiss away that terrible look in his eyes. Frustration and desire and all the fierce feelings of love she had for him glowed in her eyes.

There was one moment…but then a smile formed on his lips. That smile hovered and came closer, until with exquisite tenderness his mouth molded itself to hers. Even as her arms tightened around him, he was shifting his body over hers; in a surging thrust they were one again.

So long…too long. Her legs locked around him, terrified he would leave her.

There was nothing to be afraid of. A low groan escaped her lips as Craig urged them both to a fierce, pulsing rhythm. She could feel the hunger in him as if it were a live thing. His skin was damp with it; his eyes burned with it; his body shuddered with it.

“I love you,” he whispered. “So much, so much, so much…”

At her sudden fevered cry, he felt the agony of his own release explode inside of her. Like a prisoner set free, he saw the brightness of sun behind his eyes, a world renewed in loving, all guilt banished to another time.

***

“One can carry laziness just a little too far, you know,” Craig teased.

“It’s your fault I have all the energy of a marshmallow.” She parted her lips again.

Craig forked in another tidbit of steak. “Would you like me to chew it for you?” he asked gravely.

“Would you?”

“Doubtful.”

“I’ll settle for being fed, then.” She settled back with her head back against a bunched-up blanket, surveying her husband with limpid eyes.

Two hours before, it had taken more work to unhook the dinghy from the cruiser than it had to row in to shore. By then a velvet night had fallen, so black and soft that it looked almost as crushable as fabric. They had rowed across the cove to a deserted sandy beach; undoubtedly there was civilization somewhere close by, but there were no signs of it. Palms and tropical brush guarded their privacy, and the crackling driftwood fire Craig had built on the sand tossed up delightfully colorful sparks to the sky. That steady splish-splash of surf only added to her already somnolent state.

“Open,” Craig instructed.

She opened. Somewhere in the mound of sour cream on the fork was a tiny morsel of baked potato. Her wry smile made her husband chuckle, totally unrepentant at stuffing her unmercifully with the delectable goodies. “No more,” she pleaded when she had swallowed the bite of potato and sour cream.

“Nonsense.”

“The dinghy will sink.”

“I keep hearing all these dire predictions about your getting fat. I have yet to see one spare ounce of flesh develop.”