Forever Spring (8 page)

“ItMothers you!” she exclaimed, astounded by the realization.

“It never did before, but lately, yes, it bothers me.”

“Why?” Karen stared at him, her breakfast forgotten. Her eyes revealing the confusion she felt, she slowly lowered her gaze to the upper half of his body. Though slender, Paul was by no stretch of the imagination spare. His chest and shoulders were not those of a professional athlete but were broad enough to draw admiring glances. He was muscular without appearing overdeveloped. Mr. America he wasn’t, and thank heaven for that, Karen thought, smiling as she lifted her gaze to his slightly narrowed eyes. “There’s nothing wrong with the way you look,” she declared in a tone of utter conviction.

“Thank you.” A flush tinted the taut skin over Paul’s high cheekbones. “But if that’s true, why were you so amazed to discover me repairing the shutters?” His dark eyes gleamed challengingly.

“You didn’t answer my question about why the way you look bothers you,” Karen said evasively.

Paul slanted an arch look at her. “Ladies first,” he insisted in a teasing tone.

Suddenly impatient with the discussion, Karen swept his torso with a cool, calculating glance. “Okay, I’ll confess,” she said, meeting his gaze. “You have the appearance of a born-with-the-silver-spoon aristocrat. There’s an aura of breeding and elegance about you that conflicts with the idea of any kind of physical labor. Not that you look incapable of labor—it’s just that you’ve never had to perform it. And that’s why I was surprised to find you repairing the shutters.”

“I see.” His breakfast forgotten, Paul stared at her for a few tense moments. Then a smile twitched his sculpted male lips. “An aura of elegance, hmm?” He arched one dark eyebrow very effectively. Karen gave way to a grin.

“Yes. A definite aura of elegance.”

“You find this, er...
aura
attractive?”

Karen’s grin curved into a wry smile. “I always believed that actions speak louder than words,” she murmured, obliquely referring to her eager response to him the night before.

“You were satisfied with my nocturnal labor?”

A warm flush began at the base of Karen’s throat and crept upward to her cheeks. Yet, even flustered, she caught the hint of uncertainty in Paul’s tone. Could he possibly harbor doubts about his own prowess? she wondered, examining him more closely.

Paul’s expression could only be described as austere, but there was a tenseness about him, as if... Karen searched her mind for a fitting phrase that would define the emotion she sensed emanating from him. Then it hit her. It was as if he was waiting for a life-or-death verdict to be handed down!

Forgetting her embarrassment, Karen obeyed an impulse to reach across the table and slide her hand over his. “Yes, Paul, I was satisfied, deeply satisfied,” she admitted in a soft, steady voice.

The slow movement of Paul’s chest revealed the soundless sigh he expelled. “So was I,” he said, turning his hand to glide his palm against hers. “I was deeply satisfied in more ways than you can imagine.”

Karen was both intrigued and confused by his cryptic statement. Satisfied in more ways? she repeated to herself. What— The forming question was washed from her mind by a flood of sensations activated by the feel of his fingers lacing with hers. Biting back an exclamation of pleasure, she raised her gaze to his darkening eyes.

“Paul?”

“I want very much to experience the satisfaction again.” His voice was low and warm and fantastically sexy. Excitement warring with trepidation inside her, Karen blurted out the first thought that jumped into her mind.

“But we haven’t even finished breakfast!”

“Karen..Paul’s voice dropped to a crooning, heated whisper. “The hunger clawing at me cannot be appeased by food.” Lifting her hand, he bent to brush his lips across her fingers, and Karen felt the heat from his mouth in every nerve ending in her body.

“It’s...it’s morning!” Karen’s voice was reedy, her breathing uneven.

“Yes.” Paul’s lips explored her knuckles.

“The sun’s shining!”

“Yes.” His tongue slid provocatively between her fingers.

“Paul.” His name sighed through her slightly parted lips.

“I want to be with you, a part of you, now, in the morning, and here, in the sunshine.”

Karen surrendered, simply because she wanted to. “Yes.”

Retaining his hold on her hand, Paul stood and moved around the table to her. Smiling into her widened eyes, he dropped to his knees. With a gentle tug, he drew her down next to him. Moving carefully, as if she were constructed of the most delicate spun glass, he lowered her to the carpet. Looming over her, he captured her gaze with his dark eyes and the hem of her sweatshirt with his fingers. Swiftly, smoothly, he drew the shirt from her body, exposing her unfettered breasts to his heated gaze. A shiver rocketed the length of her spine as he lowered his head to her breasts.

“Paul. Oh, Paul!” Karen cried his name huskily, twisting and arching her back in response to the pleasure he created by flicking his tongue over one tingling crest. As his lips closed around the aroused peak, his hands slid to the snap on her jeans.

“Help me.” Paul’s voice held an enchanting mixture of plea and command as he released the zipper and tugged on her jeans.

Helpless against the sensuous excitement rushing through her body, Karen kicked the loafers from her feet and lifted her hips from the carpet. In the next instant she was naked and vulnerable to Paul’s eyes and touch. But within moments she was not alone in her vulnerability. Pushing upright, Paul literally tore the clothes from his body. Noticing her smoky-eyed gaze, he stood over her, quivering as she examined him.

Karen stared at his tall form with fascinated curiosity. In the unforgiving light of day, Paul’s body was even more appealing than when cloaked by darkness. His well-muscled shoulders and chest tapered to a flat abdomen and narrow hips. His lightly haired legs were long and well formed. And, in full arousal, he presented a breathtaking image of the primal male. And the primal male excited the primitive female inside Karen. Obeying a life drive as old as time, she opened her arms in silent invitation.

“Karen.” Paul groaned as he dropped to his knees between her thighs. “You don’t know,” he murmured tightly, grasping her hips to lift her to him. “You can’t possibly know...” His words were drowned by the harsh breath he inhaled as he joined his body with hers.

For an instant, Karen was confused, wondering what he had started to say. Then it no longer mattered; nothing mattered but the spiraling tension luring her toward the edge of reason.

* * *

Paul’s chest felt constricted from lack of air. His entire body felt tightly wired, and he held on to the last of his control with grim determination. Beneath him, Karen twisted and arched and whimpered his name; her panting voice was the sweetest sound he had ever heard. Never had a woman, any woman, responded to him so freely or given herself to him so completely. In these few moments of possession, Karen was his in an incomprehensible way that transcended the merely physical. In an effort to maintain that exquisite if inexplicable sense of ownership, Paul fought to contain the fire of desire consuming his mind and body. He would pleasure Karen before he sought his own ecstatic release.

Paul was hovering on the brink of sensual discovery, gritting his teeth, when Karen gave herself to soaring completion. Buried deeply in her warmth, holding her tightly to him, Paul shuddered, then followed her over the edge of reason.

He didn’t want to move. As his breathing returned to normal, Paul decided he could happily spend the rest of his life as he was at that moment: his body still joined with Karen’s, his head pillowed on her soft breasts.

It was not be be. The phone rang.

“I must answer it,” Karen said softly.

“Why?”

“It’s one of my quirks,” she confessed, pushing against his chest. “I can’t stand not answering a ringing phone.”

Paul sighed but moved to untangle their bodies, stretching out on the carpet beside her. The instant she was free, Karen scrambled to her feet.

“Aren’t you going to dress?” she asked, scooping her clothing from the floor before heading toward the kitchen and the shrilling wall phone.

“Eventually,” Paul murmured, stretching.

Clutching her rumpled garments to her chest with one hand, Karen reached for the receiver with her other hand and turned to glance back at Paul. His long body lay sprawled in a patch of bright morning sunlight. His eyes were closed. A tiny smile of satisfaction curved his lips. At that moment, Karen wanted nothing more than to ignore the persistently ringing phone and run into the dining alcove to cuddle next to him on the floor.

Indecision held her hand motionless in midair for a moment. Then, sighing softly, she grasped the receiver and brought it to her ear.

“Hello?” she said with barely concealed impatience.

“Karen?”

Karen frowned as she identified the anxious strain in the voice of her former mother-in-law. “Yes. Judith?” Her frown deepened. “Is something wrong?” Immediately after asking, she thought of her boys, who were in prep school in Vermont. Panic tightened her throat at the muffled sound of a sob at the other end of the line. “Judith, what is it?”

“Karen, it’s Charles. He’s had a heart attack!”

Charles? Karen’s mind went blank for a moment. Charles was not yet forty years old! “When?” She had to push the word past her frozen lips.

“Late last night. I’ve been with him since he was admitted to the hospital.” Judith paused for breath. “Karen, he’s asking for you and the boys. Will you come?”

Karen’s gaze flew to the man basking naked in the morning sunlight.
Paul.
Pain streaked through her mind and her heart. While she and Paul had been together, Charles had been fighting for his life. Shame and defeat decided the issue.

“Yes, Judith, of course I’ll come. I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

Raising her eyes, Karen found her gaze captured and held by Paul’s steady regard.

Chapter Five

Staring into Paul’s eyes, Karen heard herself respond distantly to Judith Mitchell. Her lips moved, forming words of agreement.

“Yes, I’ll leave as soon as possible.”

Paul rolled onto his stomach to relieve the unnatural twist of his neck. His eyes narrowed at the sound of her voice, and the content of her words.

“Yes, I’ll drive down and collect the boys on the way.”

Judith’s anxious voice rattled in Karen’s ear. Enmeshed by a pair of eyes shading to black, Karen heard without hearing.

“I don’t know.” Impatience clawed at her nerves, her mind, her emotions. “Judith, I simply can’t give you a definite time!” Karen could hear her own building anxiety and took a quick, settling breath. “I promise you, I will have the boys there as soon as possible.”

The panicky voice at the end of the line rattled again; Paul began to move. Karen’s control snapped.

“I have a lot to do, Judith! And unless I get off this phone, I’ll never get there! Yes. Goodbye.” Without turning to look, Karen moved her arm to replace the receiver. Plastic clattered against plastic before the receiver nestled into the cradle. Paul was moving; Karen stopped breathing.

Paul came up off the floor with the liquid agility of a man half his age, his muscles tensed, as if ready to spring into whatever action proved necessary.

Karen’s voice had been so low, so anxious, that he had heard only bits and pieces of her end of the conversation. But from her tone, Paul knew something was wrong, very wrong. Her face, moments before flushed with the soft glow of pleasurable satisfaction, was devoid of all color. Her eyes, recently slumbrous with repletion, were now wide and cloudy. Her mouth, seconds before full and moist from the caress of his lips, was now pinched and bracketed with lines of strain.

Her mouth.

The muscles lacing Paul’s stomach clenched. Alarm billowed to encompass his tightening chest.

Karen’s mouth was lost to him; he knew it. Despair invaded his mind and coiled deep down in his gut. He didn’t go to her—he couldn’t move, couldn’t think. In that instant, not understanding why or how, Paul knew that when Karen’s trembling white lips finally moved he would once again find himself outside in the cold, looking in, longing for warmth.

He wanted to curse. He wanted to scream a denial of the rejection not yet voiced. Paul stood motionless, unconscious of his nakedness, his narrowed gaze riveted to the stark expression on her face. Time froze for an endless instant. Encapsulated within that moment Paul felt the converging rush of anguished emotions and burgeoning, paralyzing fear. Supreme effort was required to form one word, a word that was like a death knell. “Karen?”

It was not unlike coming out of a trance. Karen blinked, and the timeless instant was over—everything was over. Pleasure and contentment were of a realm not intended for thirty-seven-year-old divorcees with teenage sons. Reality was shame, and selfdisgust and pain. The pain she was feeling was streaking through her body now—the pain Charles had suffered while she had been taking her pleasure.

Karen shivered. The spell was broken. The harsh light of morning poured through the windows of the alcove, gilding Paul’s tense body with spangles of gold. His nakedness was beautiful and so very natural, and yet it was an affront, an insult to her senses and shame.

“I must go.” Her voice lacked substance; her eyes lacked life.

“Go? Go where?” Caution curled around the edges of his carefully controlled tone. “What has happened?”

“To New Hampshire to collect my boys, and then to Boston,” she responded woodenly, her manner relaying unspoken words that pierced his heart with tiny poison darts. “Charles has had a heart attack, and he has been asking for me and his sons.” Her throat worked, indicating more than the need to merely swallow. “I must go at once.”

“Yes, of course you must go, but—”

Karen shook her head sharply, cutting off his words, cutting off his breath.

“There are no buts, Paul!” Her arms moved aimlessly. “I must leave at once!” As she moved, her bare sole made contact with a section of floor tile that had not been warmed by her flesh. A frown drew her eyebrows together as the sensation of chill enveloped her foot. Reluctantly, as if fearing what she’d see, Karen lowered her gaze.