He sighed with relief when he saw her car in the driveway. He pulled in, but didn’t stop behind her car. Instead he steered his car around to the backyard, and circled behind the open tool shed where she kept her lawn mower. Honeysuckle vines grew over the shed and part of the way up a steel cable bracing a power pole, forming a nice screen to hide the car. He nosed the Jaguar forward until the hood was just touching the honeysuckle, then got out, checking in both directions. The road wasn’t visible in either direction, so that meant the car wasn’t visible from the road. He felt like an idiot, but he hoped Faith appreciated the concern for her reputation.
He went to the kitchen door and rapped on it, waiting impatiently. She didn’t open it, and he knocked again. “Faith, open the door.”
Faith halted on the other side of the door, her hand hovering at the curtain. She had just been about to twitch it aside and see who was pounding on her kitchen door. She had almost jumped out of her skin at the sounds of a car pulling into her driveway and behind the house. She was relieved that it was Gray, but of all the people she didn’t think she could face right now, he headed the list.
“Go away,” she said.
The doorknob rattled. “Faith.” Her name was spoken softly, calmly. “Open the door, baby.”
“Why?”
“We have things to talk over.”
Undoubtedly, but she didn’t want to do it. She wanted to be a coward about the whole thing, and hide until she was over the embarrassment. “Maybe tomorrow,” she hedged.
“Now.” There it was, that gentle, inflexible note that said her door would be kicked open within the next ten seconds if she didn’t open it herself. Helpless and resentful, she unlocked the door.
He stepped inside and immediately turned the lock again, his gaze never leaving her. She had just gotten out of the shower, and hadn’t had time to dress before she heard the car pulling in. She had grabbed her thin robe from the back of the bathroom door, and put it on. There was nothing seductive about the robe; it was plain, white cotton, belted at the waist. But she was acutely aware that, beneath it, she was damp and bare. She clutched the lapels together over her breasts. “What do you want to talk about?”
An incredibly gentle smile spread over his face as he looked down at her. “Later,” he said, and swept her up in his arms.
• • •
Two hours later, they lay sweaty and exhausted amid the tangled sheets on her bed. The noon sun forced its way through the closed slats of the blinds, throwing thin lines of white across the floor. A gentle breeze from the ceiling fan wafted across her bare flesh, raising tiny goose bumps. Her body was so acutely sensitive that she imagined she could feel each fine, downy hair lifting at the slight chill. Her heart was beating in slow, heavy thumps, her veins and arteries pulsing with each beat. Gray lay sprawled on his back, his eyes closed and his chest heaving, while she was curled against his side with her head pillowed on his shoulder.
It was a long time before she felt as if she could move. Her limbs were heavy and limp, utterly boneless. In those two hours he had taken her three times, with as much ferocity as if the time in the courthouse hadn’t happened. And as demanding and immediate as his hunger had been, her response had matched it. She had clung to him, her nails digging into his back, her hips lifting eagerly to meet each thrust, and it seemed as if her fire had only fed his own. She didn’t know how many times she had reached satisfaction; this last time had felt like one long swell that crested, then refused to subside, so that she had been awash in sensation, drunk with pleasure.
As his breathing slowed, Gray stirred beside her and tried to lift his head, only to let it fall back with a groan. “Oh, God. I can’t move.”
“Then don’t,” she muttered, opening her eyes a slit.
A couple of minutes later, he tried again. With a great deal of effort he raised his head and slowly surveyed the tangle of their nude bodies lying amid the wreckage of the bed. His gaze settled on his penis, lying soft on his thighs. “You damn fool,” he barked. “This time, stay down!”
The whimsy startled her, and she began giggling helplessly. She buried her face against his shoulder, her entire body shaking.
Gray let his head drop back to the pillow, and cuddled her closer. “Easy for you to laugh,” he grumbled. “The damn thing’s trying to kill me. It never has had much stopping sense, but this is ridiculous. It must think I’m still sixteen.”
“It can’t think,” she pointed out, her giggles increasing.
“You’re telling me. You can reason with something that thinks.” Her giggles escalated even more, and he tickled her in revenge. “Stop laughing,” he ordered, though a smile teased his mouth. “Do you know what it’s like to have a prominent body part that won’t listen to either common sense or orders?”
“Well, no, but I know what it’s like to be in the vicinity of one.”
He chuckled and lazily rubbed his hand across his chest. “Do you know why men name their cocks?”
“No, why?” she asked, trying to stifle her laughter.
“So most of the major decisions in their lives won’t be made by a total stranger.”
They shook with laughter, and Faith grabbed a corner of the sheet to dry her eyes. She had never seen this playful, bawdy side of Gray before, and she was charmed down to her toes.
He heaved himself up on his elbow, holding her head cradled in the crook of his arm as he smiled down at her. “It’s all your fault, anyway,” he told her, smoothing a tangle of dark red hair away from her face. His hand continued in a slow stroke down her throat, over the delicate sweep of her collarbone, to close over her breast.
“Mine?” she asked indignantly.
“Sure.” Gently he cupped her breast, lifting it. He lightly rasped the pad of his thumb over the puffy pink swell of her nipple, and watched in fascination as it immediately puckered and turned red. “Your nipples are like raspberries,” he marveled, and leaned down to take that particular raspberry into his mouth, circling it with his tongue, rolling it back and forth.
Faith quivered in his arms, alarmed by the immediate swell of desire. She didn’t think she could stand it again. “I can’t,” she moaned, but he noticed that her other nipple had also puckered.
He drew back and admired his work, the red nipple glistening wetly. “That’s good,” he said absently, “because I sure as hell can’t.” Faith’s breasts were pale, with the sheen of satin, and her skin so translucent and fine that the blue tracery of veins seemed just under the surface. They were firm and full and upright, and he couldn’t keep his hands off of them. Hell, he couldn’t keep his hands off of her, period. “Just think how pretty these will be, when they’re full of milk.”
She slapped his shoulder. “I told you, I’m not pregnant!”
“You don’t know that,” he teased.
“Yes, I do know that.”
“Your timing could be off.”
“My timing is never off.”
“This once it could be.”
She glared at him, then returned to what he’d said before. “How is it my fault?”
“It must be,” he said reasonably. “Every time you’re near, I get hard.”
“I’m not doing anything. It has to be your fault.”
“You’re breathing. Evidently that’s enough.” He collapsed back on the bed and pulled her so she was lying half on him. His free hand smoothed over her slender back, and down to stroke the round curves of her bottom. “Part of it’s the way you smell, like honey and cinnamon, all sweet and spicy at the same time.”
Her head lifted and she stared at him, startled. “I’ve always loved the way you smell,” she confessed. “Even when I was a little kid. I thought you were the best smell in the world, but I’ve never been able to exactly describe it.”
“So you’ve had a crush on me since you were little?” he asked, pleased.
To hide her expression, she tucked her head back into its resting place in the hollow of his shoulder, and
inhaled the delicious male scent she had just mentioned. “No,” she said softly. “It wasn’t a crush.”
He grunted and settled himself more comfortably, pulling her thigh up to ride across his hips. She felt his penis twitch warningly against the soft inside of her leg, then subside. “I used to worry about you,” he murmured, his voice becoming sleepy. “Running around alone in the woods the way you did.”
She was silent a moment. “How often did you see me?”
“A couple of times.”
“I saw you,” she said, gathering her courage.
“In the woods?”
“At the summerhouse. With Lindsey Partain. I watched through the window.”
His eyes shot open. “Why, you little sneak!” he said, and swatted her bottom, hard. “I guess you got an eyeful.”
“I sure did,” she agreed, rubbing her bottom indignantly. She retaliated by twisting her fingers in his chest hair and pulling.
He yelped and rubbed his chest. “Ouch!”
“Revenge is sweet,” she said. “And prompt.”
“I’ll remember that,” he said ruefully, squinting down at his chest. “Damn, there’s a bald patch there.”
“There is not.”
She rubbed her cheek against him, her eyes closing as she luxuriated in the feel of him, so warm and solid and vital. She had been in paradise from the moment he carried her to bed. Lying here like this with him, so relaxed, all hostility gone and desire thoroughly sated, was more than she had ever dared hope for in her life. None of their problems were solved and the hostility would undoubtedly return, but for right now, this moment, she was happy.
So happy, in fact, that there was only a little hurt mixed in with the curiosity when she said, “You made love to Lindsey in French.”
His eyes had closed drowsily, but they popped open again. “What?”
“I heard you. You made love to her in French. Lots of love words and compliments.”
Gray was too experienced not to notice how she felt about that, and immediately discerned the reason. He gave her a disbelieving look, then put his head back on the pillow and shouted with laughter. Faith’s lower lip trembled and she tried to turn away, but his arms tightened and he held her right where she was.
“Oh, Jesus,” he said, wheezing with the effort it took to control himself. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “You little innocent. I’m fluent in French, but it isn’t my first language.” It was plain by the mortified expression in those green eyes that she didn’t understand, so he explained. “Baby, if I can still think clearly enough to speak French, then I’m not totally involved in what I’m doing. It may sound pretty, but it doesn’t mean anything. Men are different from women; the more excited we are, the more like cavemen we sound. I could barely speak English with you, much less French. As I remember, my vocabulary deteriorated to a few short, explicit words, ‘fuck’ being the most prominent.”
To his amazement, she blushed, and he smiled at this further evidence of her charming prudery. “Go to sleep,” he said gently. “Lindsey didn’t even rate a replay.”
God only knew why she found that reassuring, but she did. She went to sleep as easily as a child, exhausted by the events of the morning, and woke to make love again. He was more leisurely this time, and, with a positively wicked gleam in his dark eyes, whispered French love words to her. Then he had to grab her hands to protect his chest hairs, roaring with laughter at her indignation. That was how they passed the afternoon, sleeping, making love, and murmuring drowsily to each other afterward. If the lovemaking was wildly exciting, it was in the pillow talk that a deeper kind of intimacy was forged, a quiet sharing of secrets and thoughts, a linking together of their pasts.
“Tell me about the foster home you were in,” he said once, and was relieved when she smiled.
“The Greshams. They gave me the first real home I’d ever known. I still keep in touch with them.”
“How did you wind up in a foster home?”
“Pa took off not long after . . . after that night,” she said, faltering a little. “Russ, my oldest brother, wasn’t far behind him. Nicky tried to earn enough to feed us, I’ll say that for him, but he was relieved when the social services people found us. We were in Beaumont at the time. Jodie was put in one foster home, and Scottie and I in another. It wasn’t easy to find someone who would take Scottie, too, but the Greshams agreed if I would take care of him. As if I would leave him behind,” she said softly.
“What happened to him?”
“He died the next January. At least he was happy, the last six months of his life. After we moved in, the Greshams were wonderful to him. They bought him toys, played with him. He had so much fun at Christmas, but he faded fast after that. I sat up with him,” she said in a quiet voice, her eyes liquid with tears as she stared down the years. “I held his hand while he died.” She brushed her hand across her eyes. “I used to wonder if Guy was his father.”
He’d never thought of that. He stared at her, disturbed both by the idea that his father might have sired other children, and by the horrifying thought that he might have thrown his little brother out into the dirt.
Faith groped for his hand. “I don’t think he was,” she said, compelled to comfort him. “Your father wouldn’t have left one of his children to live the way we did. If Scottie had been his, he’d have taken care of him. There’s no telling who Scottie’s daddy was; I doubt it was Pa.”
Gray blinked, his own eyes shiny with tears. “Yes,” he said hoarsely. “He’d have taken care of him.”
Later, he asked, “What happened to the rest of your family?”
“I don’t know. I think Jodie’s living around Jackson, but I haven’t seen her since she turned eighteen. I don’t have any idea what happened to Pa and the boys.” She carefully didn’t mention Renee.
So her family, such as it was, had been shattered by his actions. He held her tight, as if he could shield her from the pain of the past.
“I hated Dad, for a while,” he admitted. “God, when I found out he’d left—he was our rock, not Mother. It hurt so much, I couldn’t stand it.”
Faith bit her lip, thinking of what she had to tell him, and soon.
“Monica tried to kill herself,” he said abruptly. “She cut her wrists right after I told her Dad was gone. She almost bled to death before I could get her to a hospital. When I came to the shack that night, I’d just left the hospital in Baton Rouge.”
He was trying to explain his rage, she realized, why he’d done what he had. She kissed his shoulder, forgiveness in the gesture. Actually, she had forgiven him long ago, understanding the pain and sense of betrayal he must have been feeling.
He stared up at the ceiling fan. “Mother withdrew completely. She stopped talking, even stopped feeding herself. She didn’t come out of her room for two years. She’s the most self-centered person I’ve ever known,” he said with brutal honesty, “but I don’t ever want to see her that way again.”
And that was why he was so adamant that neither Monica nor his mother be upset by anything Faith said or did. She had experienced some of his overprotectiveness herself. In some ways, he was like a feudal lord in Prescott, his influence touching almost every aspect of parish life, and like a feudal lord, he took his responsibilities seriously.
He rolled on top of her, entering her with a gentle insistence that nevertheless made her catch her breath, for she was sore from all the other times. He braced himself on his elbows and cradled her head in his hands. “That night is a link between us,” he whispered. “Ugly as it was, we share the memories. And it wasn’t all ugly. I wanted you that night, Faith.” He began moving slowly inside her, his eyes darkening with the slow build of passion. “You were only fourteen, but I wanted you. And when I saw you again, in the motel, it was as if the twelve years apart didn’t exist, because I still wanted you.”
Then he began to smile. “Do you want me to say it in French?” he asked.
• • •
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When she woke the next time, she lay quietly and watched him sleeping. His black lashes were dark smudges on his cheekbones, and black beard stubbled his lower jaw. His lips were softly parted as he slept, his powerful body relaxed. The beauty of him shook her. With his long hair tousled around his shoulders, he looked like a pirate taking his rest in a lady’s bed after a long day of ship-boardings and sword fights. The tiny diamond in his left ear didn’t do anything to detract from the image.
She was too sore to possibly make love again, she thought, but still his body drew her. He was wonderfully made, all long bones and hard muscle. One arm dangled off the side of the bed, but his other hand lay relaxed on his chest. He had big hands, his fingers lean and well shaped, but his little finger was as thick as her thumb. She thought of those hands on her body and shivered with delight.
She leaned over him, delicately inhaling the warm scent of his skin, rising off him on waves of heat. This was Gray. The realization stunned her anew. He was actually here. She could touch him, kiss him, do all the things she had spent most of her life only dreaming about.
His flesh drew her like a lodestone, making her breath come a little faster, and her skin flush. There were no restraints on her natural sensuality now, and the freedom to touch him, and be touched by him, was intoxicating. She laid her hand on his thigh, feeling hard muscle under the roughness of hair, then slipped her fingertips, in a dreamy, sensual sampling, down to where the flesh was smooth and hairless, trailing her fingertips across it. His scrotum hung low, his testicles like two small eggs in their soft sac. She turned her hand and cupped it, feeling it cool and heavy in her palm. He stirred restlessly, his legs falling apart, but he didn’t wake. He was a wonderfully male animal, and, for the moment at least, totally hers.
She leaned over him even closer, letting the tips of her breasts drag through the crisp, curly hair on his chest, and sucked in a quick breath at the sharp tingle of sensation that drew her nipples erect.
His eyelids fluttered and opened. “Ummm,” he said, a low hum of pleasure, and automatically reached up to circle her with his arms.