Never Trust A Lady

“Stay with me,” he gasped, his voice raw and grating. “Stay with me, love…”

And she did, and felt the wave take him, too. She held him safe as he had held her, and afterward they clung to each other like castaways, like shipwrecked and battered survivors flung up on the same shore.

Inevitably, thought must return. Her first was What now? This was the scary time. Now, when she was at her most vulnerable, what would he say? What would he do? Trembling, she waited, knowing he could spoil it all, shatter her joy and crush her spirit with the wrong word.

But what he said was the most beautiful. most perfect thing she had ever heard, lovelier than a sonnet, more stirring than an anthem. Breathed like a benediction across her sweat-damp temple, one single word: “Wow.”

Emotion tumbled through her and emerged in the form of laughter; words were limiting, and risky besides. Words were hard to organize and easily misunderstood. Silence was better, a sweet, lazy silence filled with the thump of heartbeats, the whisper of breathing, the settling-down rustles, twitches and sighs of their cooling bodies.

I wish I could stay like this forever, Jane thought, and was awed by the fact that Tom seemed to feel that way, too. Even when he finally, and with obvious reluctance, separated from her and shifted his weight to one side, he pulled her with him and wrapped her warmly in his arms, tangling his legs with hers in the damp tumble of sheets, as if he meant to stay there for a good long time. No jumping up and dashing off to the bathroom to wash, the way David always did, as if her body had somehow soiled him.

Hating the fact that she should think of David at a time like this, she stirred restlessly, spreading her fingers wide across the hills and valleys of Tom’s chest, turning her face against the wet-silk roughness of his hair. Instantly he responded, stroking her back, her hair. She felt the warm press of his mouth on the top of her head, heard the sleepy rumble of his voice in her ear.

“Well, Carlysle, what have you got to say for yourself now?”

She thought about it, laughed a little and ventured, “I don’t know…I feel a little bit dumb, I guess. To think I was so worried…”

“Hmm, I could have told you, it’s not something you forget how to do.”

“I guess not… Hey,” she said when his stomach growled suddenly, stroking her hand downward into the shallow, hardmuscled valley below his ribs, “you must be starving. How ’bout that soup now?”

“Mmm, what’s this preoccupation you have with soup?” He took her hand and pushed it farther down, across his belly and into the damp, springy thicket of hair below. Her breath caught, and he laughed softly. “Worried about keeping my strength up?”

“How can you?” she said weakly. “So…soon?” But she was already exploring the hardening shape of him, and delighted when he groaned with pleasure.

She was unreasonably delighted, too, when he said, “It’s been a long time for me, too…guess I’ve been saving up.” For a while, then, he let her hand have its way, before he stopped her with a little chuckle of regret “But you’re right, I can’t live on…sex alone. And neither can you. Maybe we should both have some of that soup.”

“It’ll just take a minute. I’ll go turn it on…” Eager to please him, she was already scrambling out of bed, bending to pick up the tunic that lay abandoned on the floor.

“Hey, you don’t have to wait on me.”

She turned, the tunic still clutched to her chest, to find him propped on one elbow, watching her with a peculiar half smile, half frown on his face.

“I just thought…” she faltered. “Would you like to take a shower while it’s heating?”

The frown disappeared as the smile pushed it aside. “Why, do I stink?”

“No!” she cried, mortified. “I didn’t mean…” But there was something about his smile, a glint in his eyes that made it devilish rather than poignant. And something in that which banished her embarrassment like a mist in a hot desert wind.

With one knee on the mattress, she leaned across to kiss him, and said in a throaty murmur, “You smell… delicious. Very sexy. Earthy. I just thought you might like to wash some of that off before you…”

“I’d love to…” his mouth opened under hers, and she sank into it gladly “…if you’ll come…do my back. Soup can wait…”

Soup…life…the world.…reality. They could all wait. Sooner or later, she knew, daybreak would come and she would have to wake up to the reality that Tom’s place in her life was fleeting at best; an Interpol agent who called a boat home, who lived and traveled mostly in distant, exotic places, he was like a wild mountain lion taking a daytime stroll through the quiet, sunlit garden of her life. By sheer chance, because of a case he happened to be working on, his world had brushed briefly against hers. But the truth was, he had no place in her life, nor she in his.

Tomorrow…tomorrow she would find out the truth. And when she did, and told him what he needed to know, he would have no more reason to stay. No reason at all.

So, there was only tonight. For now, this was the only reality. She would think about everything else…tomorrow.

For now, she would be happy to once again shut down her mind, and just…feel. Feel the gentle sluice of warm water over her skin, the slippery caress of soapy fingers. Feel the teasing tug of his teeth on her nipples, the drumming of her pulse against his hand…his mouth…his tongue.

How could she think at all, when his fingers were pushing… probing…filling her, when his tongue was following the water’s course into valleys and deeps…into her body’s secret and most sensitive places…the hollow of her throat…her navel… the soft, swollen petals between her thighs?

How could she think…breathe…stand, when her whole body was being rocked by such exquisite torture, such unimagined sensations, when she was being torn apart, shattering into a million quivering pieces?

What could she do but feel? And cling, sobbing, to Tom’s broad, slippery shoulders while he held her, oh so tightly, and stroked her back, buttocks and thighs, and whispered words of love against her belly that he didn’t mean.

“Easy…easy, love…”

They were words, just words. Of course he didn’t mean them. she told herself afterward as she stood in the kitchen stirring soup, her wet hair dripping onto the shoulders of her tunic, her knees still weak from the residual effects of her body’s most recent cataclysm. She could hear Tom whistling as he toweled himself dry in her bathroom. Probably, she thought, he didn’t even know he’d said that-it was doubtful he’d be so cheerful if he had known.

She sniffed a little as she wiped away shower drips with the back of her hand, set aside the ladle and turned off the burner under the steaming minestrone. Turning to survey the table, she murmured, “Oops,” and bent to scoop up Tom’s jacket, which she’d just noticed lying on the floor behind one of the chairs. For a moment she stood and held it, stroking the old, butter-soft leather with her hands, bringing it to her face, inhaling deeply of the musky, already-familiar smell. Tom’s smell.

Was that when it happened? she wondered. Did I fall in love with him there in that moving van, when he put his jacket over me, thinking I was asleep? Almost certainly that was when she’d known she could fall in love with him.

There was something in one of the pockets. Something hard, and…

A peculiar vibration began in her spine, right between her shoulder blades. I won’t look, she thought. I won’t look…I mustn’t look. It’s not what it seems.

She could just see the corner of a handkerchief sticking out of the pocket. The vibration spread from her spine and into her chest as, in a kind of hypnotic and unwilling fascination, like someone passing by the scene of a traffic accident, she watched her own fingers touch the handkerchief, then slowly, slowly pull it forth. Pull it until the folds of clean white cotton parted, and she could see the pale blue gleam of china. China that perfectly matched the soup bowls sitting on the table a few feet away.

The shaking was all through her now. She shook as if with a terrible sickness, unable to do anything but stare down at the broken pieces of the bowl she held in her hands, nestled in Tom’s handkerchief. What does this mean? What does this mean?

Moving slowly and stiffly, like a mechanical toy forgotten too long in the garden, she turned her head toward the doorway, trying to listen through the roaring in her ears. She couldn’t hear Tom whistling now. Any minute he might walk in. Any minute. Jerkily, she shoved the handkerchief back into the pocket from whence it had come and dropped the jacket onto a chair.