Wintergreen

“Nothing on earth could stop me from making love to you, Misha,” he whispered. “Nothing except you.”

She took a breath, her heart beating frantically, and stared at him. His hands were slowly moving up and down her sides, absorbing the feel and look of silk against her skin. Those hands were suddenly lazy, waiting. And Lorna had thousands of vocabulary words in four languages to choose from at the tip of her tongue. Nyet. Non. Nein. Please, Matthew…

Slowly, his hands shifted down from her waist, resting possessively on the curve of her hips. “Unbutton my shirt, Misha,” he whispered.

The buttons trembled beneath her fingers. “Matthew. Listen…” Would he settle for a brilliant discussion of world politics? Because somewhere in her head she knew this wasn’t right. It was too fast, too overwhelming, too unsettled… Yet another corner of her mind told her that nothing could be more right. No one else had made her feel like this. She’d said no to men for years because she had felt it wasn’t right. And Matthew was no stranger. Once friend…now lover. And when her hands climbed up the warm flesh of his chest, she could anticipate his shudder even before she felt it.

“Misha…”

The lazy sensuality in his eyes was replaced by something yet more compelling. She was still absorbing that look in his eyes as he lowered her to the carpet, a long powerful leg stealing between hers, pressing intimate flesh against intimate flesh. She closed her eyes as he removed her slip and unclasped her bra. He buried her low, guttural murmur in her throat with his lips on hers, draining her mouth of sound. The feeling of her bare breasts crushed to his chest touched off a summons in her soul, a burst of desire so consuming…

The fire was such a bright orange, licking flames up the flue. Matthew’s flesh took on the silk sheen of moisture; the fire was reflected in his eyes, which seemed to blacken to ebony at her fevered touch. She could not touch enough, as she watched the sheen of his teak skin, seeing the shadows of both of them in the movements of love, seeing the flames burn higher. Lovingly, they finished undressing one another, and she clasped his naked body to hers.

He whispered her name over and over as she took him inside her, trembling with that intimate intrusion, murmuring a sudden startled cry. She was someone else, a stranger, bursting with an aching, restless need so intense that she felt lost, frightened. For so long, she had trusted no one; for so long she had allowed no one to come close; never had she felt so vulnerable. She wanted Matthew so desperately. Too much. Love me, Matthew. Make it all right…

His hand brushed back her hair, over and over. “Easy,” he murmured. “I’m going nowhere without you, love. Nowhere. You know better. You’re going with me. Trust me…”

She barely heard the words, with his lips in her hair, but she could feel in his body language what he was trying to say. The tension had come from nowhere. A butterfly fleeing the sound of the wind; a wild creature that bolted from fear of being captured. And Matthew remained cleaved to her, his body part of her own. His warm weight absorbed her trembling; his hands moved slowly, with infinite tenderness; his lips made slow, patient, infinite promises. She could have sworn he understood her better than she understood herself. A long time ago, she had been deserted in a time of need she would never forget; in fierce, wild passion, she had forgotten that. Her soul hadn’t, not at the time when she was at her most vulnerable, when there could be no fulfillment without trust.

“Matthew…”

His touch, so tender, kindled fresh fire. His murmured words kindled more; the scent of him, the feel of his skin, the promise in his eyes… The complicated problems in her life suddenly seemed so simple. Every instinct told her he loved her. Every instinct responded to that promise. With touch, with love, with flame, she responded, and he gave back in kind. It was double what they had started out with. He had taken a wild, fiercely abandoned woman to a very special place, where no one could ever have heard such music, where no one could ever have been made so free.

Sleepily, she curled next to him. Matthew pressed kiss after kiss on her temples, in her hair, both of them exhausted in the aftermath of loving. “So warm, Misha, so incredibly lovely.” His finger gently nudged up her chin so he could look at her again. “You glow, did you know that? All giving…”

She shook her head, flushing faintly.

He smiled, just as faintly, bemused at her shyness.

“Can I tell you what a beautiful body you have?” he murmured teasingly.

She shook her head again.

“What an incredible lover you are? What I felt like when I was inside you? I never wanted to leave you, sweet. I never wanted it to end. It was as if I’d always known how it could be and I couldn’t stand to let go of you…”

She snuggled her cheek in the crook of his shoulder, her arms still loosely around his neck. He kissed her again, rubbing his face against her cheek until she smiled, feeling ticklish, forgetting her shyness.

“On the other hand…” He nudged up her chin again so he could look in her eyes. “I’m not too pleased at getting quite so carried away. There are four couches in this house and three beds, Misha. Would you like to tell me how we ended up on the carpet?”

That roused her, her lips irrepressibly curling up at the corners. “You’re a disgrace as a sophisticated bachelor,” she said gravely. “What good are all the recessed lights and the elegant couches if you’re really a teenager with a libido that gets ahead of you? Honestly, Matthew. What happened to all that formidable control, the authoritative decision-maker…”

“It’s all your fault,” he growled.

“Yours.”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t think. It was your fault I couldn’t think.”

“That’s your business, thinking. Brilliantly outthinking criminals.”

“No, I outthink prosecuting attorneys.”

He chuckled and leaned over her, placing a languid kiss exactly between her third and fourth rib. “What’s criminal, Misha, is what you do to me. How you took fire…”

And she had, she thought fleetingly. But it had never been like that before. Never had she associated lovemaking with such intense passion, such abandoned fire, such desperate need, such perfect synchrony. She’d learned the rules with Richard a very long time ago, but had never played the game. At nineteen, she had known nothing about loving. She remembered suddenly how much she had lost then, and realized with frightening awareness how much more she could lose now.

She was falling in love with Matthew, and that made her more vulnerable than she had ever been in her life.

It was four in the morning; the fire had died; the air grew cool on her skin; and all she wanted to do was sleep. Instead, she admitted to herself that it was past time to go home.

Chapter 6

“Mom!”

Lorna’s eyes flew open, focused vaguely and rejected the harsh winter sunlight beaming down on her bed; then she closed them again.

“Mom! Aren’t you even going to thank me for letting you sleep in until eight o’clock?”

Eight o’clock? When she hadn’t gotten to bed until five? Her eyes stayed closed against the virtuous appeal in her son’s voice. Johnny hesitated.

“I tell you what. I’ll make us both breakfast-”

Resolutely, she pushed the covers off her body, freezing-cold air replacing her warm cocoon and forcing wakefulness on her. The last time Johnny had volunteered to prepare breakfast Lorna had spent four hours cleaning up. “I’ll make it,” she said groggily. “You want pancakes or bacon and eggs?”

“French toast.”

Naturally. She stumbled over to the closet, shrugged on a robe and slippers, and joined her son in the kitchen. She put butter in the skillet to melt while she dipped the thick pieces of French bread in beaten egg, her head feeling distinctly like steel wool. Old steel wool. Johnny’s usual Saturday-morning exuberance was enough to make