Different Dreams (23 page)

They looked at one another from opposite sides of the bed they'd shared so joyously such a short while ago. Malou didn't answer. There was too much to say, to apologize for. Cam watched her, waiting for an explanation. None came. The gap between them seemed so wide. When had it grown to such an immense size? he wondered sadly. How had she slipped so far from him? But it had taken this damnable, unbridgeable gulf to make him see how close they had been. Memories of that closeness clouded his vision, so that instead of seeing an unruly crown of sunny curls, he recalled the feel of them against the palms of his hands, the scent of them when she had lain beneath him, their bodies tangled in love.

“Cam, I . . .”

It was the catch in her voice that undid him completely.
That, and the haunted, tortured look in her eyes that hadn't disappeared even after he'd pulled her from whatever nightmare she had been flailing and screaming against when he walked in. He abandoned his tough-guy pose.

Malou saw the change in his eyes, saw the wall he had built against her melt away, leaving nothing but a bed between them. Her gaze as it traveled from those now-tender eyes to his full, demanding lips was a tongue of flame that licked heat into Cam.

It was a heat that sought release as it built within him, stoked ever higher by a bellows of desire that blew through him each time he looked at Malou, making him remember. The feel of her breasts, full and yearning beneath his fingers, of her arms wrapped around his neck, of her legs about his waist. All other thoughts, all other doubts were immolated in the heat of the blaze burning through him. He reached a hand out across the whiteness of the sheet and Malou met it with her own. Their fingers twined together. It hadn't been so difficult to bridge the gap between them after all.

Gently Cam pulled Malou to him by their locked hands. She slid across the sheet, stopping inches from his outstretched body. Cam devoured her with his eyes. They were no longer creatures from different worlds. He saw in her face, uptilted to his, that together they created a separate world that only they inhabited. It was the
world of their desire for one another. That desire had been overpoweringly physical from the very beginning, but it had grown even stronger as he came to know more about the strong-willed woman quivering next to him. Perhaps that was the secret, that knowing her strength, her intelligence, it excited him all the more to realize that she wanted him as mightily as he desired her. Passion throbbed through him as he saw it reflected in her eyes.

I love this woman.
It was Cam's last thought before he surrendered to instinct's primitive power.

Malou quailed before the urgency of her need. The heat between them seared her the length of her body as she lay stretched before him. Though nothing but their hands touched, she was left gasping at this barest of touches and aching for so very much more. It was an ache that their physical joining would momentarily slake but never fully satisfy. She wanted Cameron Landell in every way one person can experience another, physically and spiritually, but at that very moment she wanted him physically with a hunger that left her reeling.

She reached out a trembling hand and slid it along the whipcord sinews of Cam's arm all the way to the swell of his shoulder, then over to rest against the curve of his neck, where she could feel the tidal surge of blood pulsing beneath her hand. They lay that way for a long moment, sharing the same breath, holding passion at bay, letting it build to a sweet and maddening power.

Malou could never say who broke first. Had her hand tightened on Cam's neck, pulling him forward that fraction of an inch? Or had his lips already begun their decisive descent? It never really mattered. All that mattered was his mouth on hers, devouring what she offered and returning an even greater sensuous bounty of his own. He rose to cradle her head in his two strong hands, trapping her lips and slowing the frenzy that was shivering through her at this first release. With an agonizing slowness, he began making teasing forays, easing his tongue in and out between her lips until Malou had relaxed into a narcotizing languor. Then Cam's hand stroked her neck, her back, until she went slack with sensuous abandonment, until her straining body was convinced that Cam's would be there for a good long time. She pressed softly against him and he held her, whispering into her hair.

“I want this to be long and sweet and then, maybe, there will be nothing left for us to talk about when we're through.”

“Oh, Cam, darling. I was so stupid. So wrong . . .”

Lightly he pressed a forefinger to her lips to silence her. “Hush. ‘Darling' is all that I want to hear right now, for you are that to me, Malou. You are my heart's darling and there can be no way around it.”

“Cam, I've dreamed of you. I dreamed of you the first night after we met, but I'd been dreaming of you for years before that. You are the one I've been waiting for.”

“And you, Mary Louise, always you.”

When their lips met again there was a new richness, an indescribable sweetness that neither of them could savor long enough or deeply enough.

“I can't believe you still have all this on,” Cam said with a lightness that was betrayed by his ragged breathing as he began fiddling with buttons and zippers.

Malou couldn't believe it either. She already felt loved to the depth of her soul. Cam made swift work of her clothes, then began to tear away at his own. This time it was Malou's turn to slow and steady him. Kneeling beside him, she captured his hand with hers and removed it from the buckle he was jerking open. Instead, with the same maddening slowness he'd used to tantalize her, she toyed languidly with the fastener. After she'd finally unbuckled it, she tugged gently at the zipper. Cam's eyes slid shut, and a groan rattled in his throat. She unbuttoned his shirt and caressed it away from Cam's chest and over his shoulders, trailing the teasing tips of her nails along every inch of the firm flesh she left exposed.

As she knelt above him, her breasts came to tautened life beneath the stimulation of his ardent gaze. But when Cam, still only half-undressed, reached out toward Malou, she backed away, returning her attention to the jeans that still needed to be removed. She slid them out from beneath him. When Cam rose up on one elbow, his muscles bunching above it, Malou pressed him back to
the pillow with a debilitating kiss. Her lips still pinioning him to the bed, she drifted her hand across his chest, pausing to circle his nipples until they hardened. Then down to where his wide rib cage sloped into the hard, flat plane of his stomach. Her hand went lower but skirted along the outer edge of his pelvis, across the powerful band of muscle that joined his thigh to the pelvis there, then down. The springy hair of his upper leg tickled Malou's palm as she brought her hand back up, and as she reached the juncture between Cam's thighs, a sharp intake of breath met her touch. He was alive beneath her hand. Alive and ready for loving her.

Nothing Malou could have done would have restrained Cam when he rose again. She dissolved into his kiss, sinking beneath it back onto the bed. Their tongues warred in a duel where the victor was the one who could inflict the most pleasure. Cam won by claiming new territory; his mouth brushed down along her neck and fastened on her breast, sucking surges of pleasure through her that pulsed out of her deepest core. Then Cam was seeking that very core, probing for it with a tongue that washed shivers of ecstasy through Malou. And still it probed with a rhythm and constancy that pounded delirium into Malou's blood. It probed until the ecstatic shivers gathered together and centered on that one bliss-lavished spot, crowding together, denser and denser, until there was no more room for any more pleasure.
Until all the delicious feelings exploded together, all at once.

Only then, feeling Malou tense and arch toward him, then twist away, only then did Cam stop to move back up and hold Malou in his arms as the quakes of release swept through her. Her quick, short breaths battered against his chest. When they had evened, her eyelids fluttered open and, still dazzled with love, she looked up at him.

That gaze ripped something loose deep inside of Cam. He squeezed a warm rain of kisses on Malou's face, her eyes, cheeks, brows. And Malou returned every one of them. But there remained an even better way of showing Cam all that her heart held. She slid close until she felt him, still ready to love her. She swung her leg on top of his and, facing each other, side by side, their kisses never stopping, he sought entrance.

Cam's hand moved along the length of her leg, over her hip, her waist, and came to rest on her breast, where it massaged wondrous patterns. He bent forward until his lips replaced the hand. He teased the nipple with his lips and teeth, intensifying desire. As desire stirred within Malou, his nuzzling grew slightly rougher as he tugged the nipple to tautened, pulsing life. Feeling Malou's building response, he clasped her buttocks and pressed her more tightly to him.

Malou felt all of him driving more deeply into her, reigniting a profound need. She clung to him, unable to
resist the primal rhythms that moved them, undulating to the tempo dictated by Cam's hands on her hips.

His mouth closed over hers, his kiss a frenzied taking of all she could give. His breathing matched the staccato hammer of his heart pounding against hers. His face was transfixed. He was as much a captive to the pleasure she gave as she was to the ecstasy that held her in thrall.

“Oh, darling, I'm close, very close,” he whispered fiercely, as she moved against him.

“Yes, Cam. Oh, yes,” she mumbled, her response an insensate affirmation of what they were reaching together.

Knowing that he need restrain himself no longer, Cam's motions grew more frantic. With each wild thrust the heavenly feeling built. Malou clung to Cam now, answering his raw need with her own. And still the pulsing rhythm increased to an almost unbearable pitch. It catapulted her higher and higher until she floated into a realm of oblivion and exquisite pleasure heightened by the feel of Cam's fulfillment pulsing deep within her.

She came languidly back to reality to find her hands grasping Cam's tight buttocks. She stroked his hard, muscled torso, then curved her arms about his broad shoulders to cradle him against her tenderly. To hold this bold, powerful man who had quivered in her arms just as she had in his. He lay so still, so obviously wrapped in a cocoon of contentment, that Malou was sure he'd fallen asleep until he spoke.

“Are you an angel or an enchantress or both?” he asked, a warm, soundless chuckle rumbling against her in his chest. “I can't make up my mind which.”

“I'm just the prim primatologist, don't you remember?”

“Who on earth ever said that? Someone severely lacking in taste and perception, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Malou agreed happily.

Reluctantly, Cam shook off the marvelous, blanketing layers of contentment and propped himself up on an elbow above Malou. He traced a finger across her cheek and over her lips, sighed, and asked, “Mary Louise Sanders, what
am
I going to do with you?”

“I rather liked the things you've come up with so far,” she answered impishly. But Cam's thoughtful expression told her that the time had arrived for the serious discussion their lovemaking had only postponed.

He sighed again and let his hand drop. “I don't want to get into this, do you? It was a miracle that you happened to be here. What happens between us in bed together is a miracle. And it's a miracle that our worlds ever intersected long enough for us to meet. Should we question miracles?” he asked, a smile lightening his intense features.

“I've always maintained a strict policy against the practice myself,” Malou quipped, joyous relief flooding into her smile.

“But what
were
you doing here?”

“I needed sanctuary,” Malou said simply, “and this is mine.”

Cam nodded in solemn agreement, for she had spoken his heart and the reason why he too had been drawn to the stone cabin secluded from time.

“And speaking of sanctuary,” Malou said, sucking in a deep breath for courage, “I've come up with a great idea for a monkey sanctuary.”

Cam groaned. “If someone had told me a few months ago that I'd be in bed with a gorgeous woman talking about monkeys, I'd have advised that person to seek professional help. Now, maybe I'm the one who should see a shrink,” he said with mock disgust, but a grin was flirting at the corners of his mouth.

“No, really, it's the perfect plan.” Now that Malou was actually putting her idea into words, they burbled excitedly from her. “Move the monkeys down here,” she blurted out.

“Down here? Perhaps you'd like to get them all in bed with us?”

“No, silly,” Malou laughed, buoyant with relief and exuberant in the glow of Cam's love. “Move the monkeys onto this land around the cabin.”

Cam cocked a doubtful eyebrow at her.

“No, listen,” she insisted, not allowing Cam an opportunity to object. “You've said yourself that this property
isn't worth much. It's wild, overgrown, hilly, rocky, remote. There's not a decent road out here, and it's on the flood plain. All qualities that make this land worthless for cattle or crops but ideal for monkeys.”

Cam continued to look doubtful. Malou ignored him.

“It has a natural water supply running through it, and since it's hilly, the troop wouldn't need such a large compound so it wouldn't be too terribly expensive to fence it in.”

“One thought . . .” Cam attempted to interject, holding up a finger, but Malou didn't even slow down.

“Sell the land they're on right now, and you'd make enough from that to pay off your note on time and have plenty left over to fence in the sanctuary. That's what we'll call it, the Landell Monkey Sanctuary.”

“Malou, if I may just interrupt to . . .” But Malou wouldn't let him. She had to convince him. Had to make him share her enthusiasm.