concern to Anne after she’d touched him, either.
She wandered into her bedroom, hung up her jacket, neatly lined up her shoes and unzipped the back of her dress. Then, on impulse, she checked the latch on the bedroom window. It was locked.
An hour later it was open, not only the latch but the window as well. Anne’s elbows were on the sill, her chin cupped in her hands, and she was staring blindly out at the three-quarter moon. And she was freezing. The night air was brisk, and her dress was still unzipped in back. Not that she was inclined to move.
There had been a time in Jake’s life when he had preferred entering through a window rather than a door. A whole summer, actually. It had started when she was eighteen, a night when she had been very much alone and terribly depressed. Her mother had died two weeks before. Anne had told herself a dozen times that she was not grieving, because there had never been much love between daughter and mother to grieve for. The reminders didn’t seem to help. The feeling of loss kept overwhelming her; she hadn’t been able to sleep…and she had had no idea Jake was even in town until she heard the rattle in the second-story window of her grandmother’s house.
Horrified, she’d unhooked the casement window before he killed himself. He had climbed up a shaky trellis, clinging to the stone wall of the house. Jake burst through the window like Errol Flynn, give or take the nose, the different hair color, the jeans and a completely different build. She’d switched on the light by her bed, smiling as she hadn’t smiled in weeks, trying to look perfectly scandalized.
“What on earth do you think you’re-”
“I heard about your mother.” His sweat shirt was neatly tucked into his jeans for some reason. She discovered why when he untucked it, and kings and queens and pawns bounced all over the carpet. The chessboard came from behind his back. “I figured you might enjoy a game of chess.”
“It’s three o’clock in the morning!”
“So? You weren’t sleeping.”
She’d given up trying to reason with him when she was three. It was very like Jake to do the unexpected. It was very like Jake to totally ignore the white cotton nightgown that barely covered her thighs, her mane of hair all tangled around her face. Somehow she felt self-conscious only about the faint violet shadows beneath her eyes, because that was where he kept looking, studying her. She lost the game, in seven moves, and set up the board again.
Somehow, they never played the second game. “Come here, Anne,” Jake said quietly.
The voice did not sound at all like Jake. It threw her, the tender intimacy in his tone. She simply went to him. He folded her up so fast in a huge, warm hug, holding her…holding her. In a moment, the light was off, and they were lying on her bed, and she didn’t object. Emotions were exploding inside her, a terrible, terrible pain that she didn’t know how to let go of. He kept smoothing back her hair, his touch so gentle. “You want to talk about her?”
His voice was rough, oddly fierce. Jake had never liked her mother. She didn’t want to talk, anyway. It hurt too much to talk. Jake was warm and vibrant and strong, and all she wanted was to hold on to him. Jake always understood. She didn’t have to talk. She had the frightening feeling that if he let her go, she would fall down a steep cliff, that tears would start and never stop. Unconsciously, she shifted even closer to him, her legs pressing between his, her arms wrapping around his waist. Jake held her still, his hand continuing to comb through her hair. “Don’t you dare hurt for her,” he murmured. “Don’t you dare, Anne.”
His lips moved down in the darkness, finding her mouth. She closed her eyes, strange feelings flooding through her, new feelings. Her whole body seemed to be trembling, which made no sense. She’d trusted Jake all her life as she trusted no one else, and his lips were soothing on hers, soothing and warm…and unbelievably gentle. Tentatively, her hand groped for him, slowly moving up his shoulder, then sliding up farther to the hair at the nape of his neck. Such rich, thick hair. She buried her fingers in it, unconsciously clenching as his kiss deepened, as his other hand caressed down her spine to the soft flesh exposed by her raised nightgown. Possessively, he cupped her bottom, drawing her into the mold of his pelvis, his whole body suddenly so strangely taut, tense. For a moment, she was not exactly sure what the hardness against her abdomen was. Part of Jake, she thought fleetingly. “It’s all right,” she whispered.
His lips settled on her throat. “
But he was. She understood that. He was going to make love to her. She should have known he’d come to her. Jake had always come, every time there was trouble, from the time she’d been a little girl. It was different now. For the first time in weeks, she could feel her grief ebbing and other, even stronger emotions overpowering that feeling of loss.
They were new emotions, and she still felt shy when he pulled off her nightgown, when she saw the silver sheen in his eyes, the streak of pale moonlight on her body. Suddenly, there was no loss and depression, or perhaps those feelings had inexorably blended with others. Wild, primitive yearnings swept through her bloodstream, echoing in the call she whispered to him. The first time had to be with Jake. How could it have been with anyone else?
They were friends turned lovers. She knew him so well, trusted him so very much. He was slow and patient… and infuriating. So very like Jake. Having so immediately made a dozen momentous discoveries, she was hungry for more, the way only the newly hungry can be. She wanted so badly to be timeless Eve, and instead was eighteen- year-old Anne, who truthfully didn’t know so very much. Her kneecap hit his kneecap. He chuckled. How could he? No lover in any romance she’d ever read chuckled. And then he actually made her laugh…a sound he rapidly muffled with a kiss.
Anne was so very careful to play by the rules in everything she did. Jake didn’t seem to know any rules, encouraging her in everything she did, not seeming to care if she was awkward, acting as if there was nothing to be shy about when she was terribly and suddenly aware there were a thousand things to be shy about. What on earth did he think he was doing?
She could not seem to catch her breath. Laughter, then kisses that stole her breath. Tickling, and then a rough-smooth kneading that ignited fires. Soft, soft tongues played with each other, a play that suddenly wasn’t play. Jake’s palm was cupped over that feminine mound between her thighs, and she was whimpering, not laughing. When he moved over her, he’d already told her ever so gently what he was going to do, and she was impatient, even irritable…until she felt the thrust inside her body, shockingly intimate. Then something went wrong. Jake had hurt her.
“The pain is over,” he promised. “No more, Anne. Trust me.”
She did, but trust had nothing to do with this. Pagan Eve was still only eighteen. She could talk to Jake. She’d always been able to talk to Jake. This wasn’t going to work. Maybe there was something physically wrong with her. Could they discuss it? She was afraid he was going to tear her apart.
He listened; she would remember for the rest of her life how Jake had listened. How his face was carved in moonlight, how he never smiled. She would have died if he’d smiled. Instead, his lips moved, over her eyes, over her cheeks, settling on her mouth again. The kiss had sent her well on her way to euphoria before his lower body moved again, and by then her body somehow already knew the rhythm. She moved with him, mindlessly, and then, magically, everything was different.
Her flesh grew moist and silky; so did his. She was not lost, not anymore. She felt wild and free, and this strange, fierce sweetness kept building. She needed…something. So terribly. Jake kept whispering to her, coaxing her. And then night exploded into day like a flash fire. An ecstasy ripped through her that she could feel to her fingertips, an intense, rich pleasure that she had never expected in a thousand years.
After that, he wouldn’t let her go. She was exhausted, but he insisted on taking her through that ecstasy again and again…
Anne closed the window. She undressed, brushed her hair, settled under the covers, and knew she wouldn’t sleep.
Chapter 5
The next morning, at the bank, Anne pushed the button for the elevator and glanced at her watch. Three
