Heaven, Texas (24 page)

She heard the devil's laughter in her ear, soft and seductive. “Relax, Suzy. Enjoy.”

And, God forgive her, she did enjoy.

He played with her breasts, nipped at her ears and shoulders with his teeth, sucked at the tender flesh of her neck. Their bodies shifted so that sometimes the surging jet of water pummeled her, sometimes him. She lost all sense of herself, didn't even think to object when he pushed himself inside her from behind and let the water work at them where they were joined. She tried to move on him, but he wouldn't allow it. And each time she was about to go over the edge, he shifted the position of her body just enough so that it didn't happen.

She began to sob. “Please  .  .  .”

“What do you want?” he whispered, as he pushed deeper.

“Please, let me  .  .  . Let me  .  .  .”

“Do you want more, Suzy? Is that what you want? You want more?”

His gentle croon fueled her excitement. “Yes  .  .  . Yes  .  .  .” She was begging him, but it had been so long that she couldn't stop herself.

His voice was soft and gruff and tender. “Not yet, love. Not yet.”

She sobbed as he lifted her off him. She tried to turn in his arms, but he stood. In the dim light, she could see his silhouette and the hard, thick thrust of him. Instinctively, she reached up and clasped him, shameless and brazen, forgetting that this man wasn't her husband, that she hadn't wanted this.

He groaned and caught her wrist. “Wait. Just a little while longer.”

He stepped from the water and slipped his robe over his wet body. Without bothering to fasten it, he pulled her out and wrapped her in a towel, then picked her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom, as if she were a virgin going into her bridal bower.

She turned her head into his shoulder as he walked into the dimly lit room. She didn't want to see him, didn't want to remember who he was and who she was, and that she was about to betray her husband. What was she doing in a stranger's arms hovering on the brink of sexual oblivion?

“No light.” She needed the darkness to hide the shame she felt for letting this man arouse her to such a state where she couldn't help herself.

He stopped walking. She lifted her head to gaze at him and saw that his hair was wet and rumpled, his expression unreadable.

She expected him to put her on the bed, but instead, he carried her in the opposite direction, toward a door she hadn't noticed earlier. She gazed up at him questioningly, but he wasn't looking at her. With his foot, he pushed opened the door and carried her inside.

To her shock, he had taken her into his large walk-in closet. She saw double rows of expensive suits and tailored shirts, orderly racks of boots and wingtips, a stack of denim jeans, a pile of knit shirts. The heady masculine scents enveloped her: cologne, leather, and the clean, starchy smell of freshly laundered shirts. He set her down on the carpeted floor and immediately reached behind him to shut the door. They were plunged into a darkness so thick she caught her breath in fear.

His voice drifted to her, husky and dangerous. “No light.”

The towel slipped from beneath her arms as he tugged it away. Then he must have moved back because he was no longer touching her.

Seconds ticked by. Her heart began to pound. She stood naked in the darkness, no longer certain how close he was to her. Even the sound of his breathing was hidden by the distant hum of the air conditioner. The darkness disoriented her. It was too dense, too absolute. She thought of death and the grave. She turned, then turned again, but the movement was a mistake because she lost her bearings. She clutched her throat against a rising tide of hysteria.

“Way?”

Nothing.

She took an involuntary step backward. Garments brushed her naked body. She strained to hear the sound of an indrawn breath, a movement, a joint cracking, anything.

Out of nowhere, a hand touched her outer thigh. She jumped. Because she could see nothing, hear nothing, the hand seemed disembodied, as if it were coming from a phantom lover, something not quite human, demonic, even. It brushed over the patch on her hip, and she stiffened. It moved on, touching her waist, climbing her rib cage, caressing her tender, tortured breasts.

She could no longer stand submissively in front of this demon lover. Reaching out with the palms of her hands, she felt for him. She touched his chest and realized he had discarded his robe. The thick pelt of hair was soft beneath her fingers. Hoyt's chest hadn't been as hairy, and the strangeness of this body heightened her dark fantasy that she had fallen in with the devil. The configuration of muscles beneath her hands felt wrong, not what she had grown accustomed to over three decades. She was alone in thick, dark space with a demon lover, and her wicked body silently begged for his touch.

Despite the threat of eternal damnation, her hands began to roam him, learning his devil's body by touch. His skin should no longer be damp from their bath, but it was, damp and hot. Beneath her fingertips, his muscles contracted, and for the first time she could hear the heaviness of his breathing. She dropped her hands, touching him there, where she had no business being, exploring him, greedy with desire. She tested his weight and thickness, stroked him.

Abruptly, he pushed her away, and once again she stood alone in the impenetrable darkness.

Her breathing rattled in her ears.

He turned her. His hands palmed her buttocks, kneaded them, slipped between. Once again, she felt only his hands in the darkness, nothing else, no other part of him. Disembodied demon hands separated her legs, stroked her until she hummed and quivered. Abruptly, he pushed her down on her back into the thick, soft carpet.

She lay there waiting.

Nothing.

Death thick darkness. The loom of the grave. The specter of damnation. She embraced it all.

A force—animal, human, demon spirit?—caught her knees and opened them. No other touch. Just a demanding pressure, ordering her to offer up her most tender parts in sacrifice to the dark angel.

And then nothing.

She lay waiting, barely able to breathe. Damned already, her body burned with pagan passion.

Then she felt it. The soft tickle on her inner thighs. The parting. The moist hot tracing of a tongue.

Oh,
this! This!
She had missed it unbearably. Dreamed of it. This lap and thrust, this rough and silken stroking, the suction, the greedy mouth full-feasting, all of it heightened by the darkness of the underworld. Her demon lover devoured her until she lost herself. With a cry she fell, spinning round and round, dropping into the embracing pit.

He was inside her before she could reclaim her self. His body covered her and filled her. She wrapped her legs around his hips, her arms around his neck. Her breasts burned as they rubbed against the thick hair on his chest. He plunged into her center, withdrew, plunged again and again, carrying her with him on his spiraling journey upward.

His cry was low and hoarse, hers a keening wail as they tumbled together into the very heart of darkness.

It had never felt more welcome.

Some time later, she began to cry. Light spilled over her as he opened the door of the closet. She curled into a ball, hid her face in her arms. Guilt and shame consumed her.
My love, my love.
She had betrayed her husband, betrayed the man she loved with all her heart. She had promised to love him forever, until death do us part. But she wasn't dead. And he was still the husband of her heart, her dearest love, and she had betrayed him.

It shouldn't have happened like this. She was supposed to have been making a sacrifice! She had gone to Way to save the town. Instead, she had ended up pleading with him to take her, and in the process, she had lost herself.

“Stop it, Suzy. Please.” His voice was ragged, almost as if he were in pain.

She plucked at the towel fallen in a heap next to her and struggled to sit as she used it to cover her shame. She looked up and saw him looming above her, still naked, wet with her.

Tears of grief coursed down her cheeks. “I want to go home.”

“You're too upset,” he said quietly. “I can't let you do that.”

She dropped her gaze to her lap, studying her bare knees, which were bent beneath her. “Why did you do this to me?” she cried. “Why couldn't you have left me alone?”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean for this to happen. I'm sorry.”

He picked up his robe from the floor and slipped into it. It was dark green and richly patterned. Gently clasping her arm, he drew her up off the carpet. As she stood next to him, he pulled a white terry cloth robe from a hook by the door and helped her into it, though it was much too large for her. His hand rested in the center of her back as he steered her from the closet she had entered so many centuries before. She moved automatically beside him. What difference did it make where he took her? What more could he do to her?

He led her as if she were a child, to a comfortable, overstuffed chair sitting near the window. Her eyes pleaded with him. “Let me go now.” Once again, she began to cry.

He lifted her into his arms and settled her on his lap in the chair. Tucking her against his chest, he stroked her hair. “Don't cry,” he whispered. “Please don't cry.” His lips brushed her forehead, her temple. “This wasn't your fault. It was me. I did this to you.”

“I let you. Why did I let you?”

“Because you're a warm and sensuous woman, love, and it had been too long for you.”

She told herself she would take no comfort from him. Her betrayal ran so deep she had no right to comfort. But he stroked her hair and held her tight. Eventually her tears stopped, and she slept in his arms.

When Way finally heard the deep, even sound of her breathing, he pressed his lips to her forehead and squeezed his eyes shut. How had he let this get so far out of his control? Suzy Denton had never harmed him, and she didn't deserve what he'd done to her. It wasn't her fault that she'd been the subject of his teenage crush, the target of all the surly scowls and snarling comments he'd leveled at her, a dime store James Dean trying to impress Natalie Wood.

When she'd walked into his living room a month ago and he'd seen the same fearful expression on her face she'd worn as a teenager whenever he'd looked at her, something inside him had snapped. All his money and power had evaporated, and he felt that familiar impotent rage that had been his constant companion when he was a kid. He'd invited her to his house with some half-assed notion of sweeping her off her feet with his charm and making her see him as he was now, instead of as he'd been thirty-five years earlier. Instead, he'd insulted her beyond belief.

Despite the way he'd baited her, it hadn't occurred to him that she would think he was trying to blackmail her into his bed. He'd had his share of female companionship over the years, and he'd certainly never had to resort to blackmail to get it. But she didn't know that. His proposal that she act as his companion and hostess had been an impulsive one, born of anger. He'd expected her to tell him to go to hell, but instead, she'd stood there in his rose garden and looked as if he'd slapped her.

This past month while he'd been gone from Telarosa, his shame over the way he'd treated her had grown. By the time he'd returned to town, he'd already made up his mind to call her and apologize, hoping that he could still somehow salvage the situation. But the moment he identified himself, he'd heard the quaver in her voice and he'd lost control. Instead of asking her forgiveness, he had bullied her into joining him here by continuing to imply that her acceptance was linked with the future of Rosatech.

Even tonight, he could have denied it. Tonight, when she'd stormed into his bedroom, he could have told her the truth. So why hadn't he done it?

He stared blindly ahead as awareness hit him with brutal force. He had done this awful thing because he had fallen in love with Suzy Denton. Whether it had happened tonight, last month, or thirty years ago, he didn't know. He only knew that he loved her, and he hadn't found the will to stop himself.

He was a man who prided himself on always being in control, on never acting impulsively or reacting emotionally. When he'd been presented with the opportunity to take over Rosatech, for example, he'd done it with a cool head. He'd even experienced a trace of cynical amusement that he still wanted revenge for the way the town had treated his mother. He'd never imagined that he would get emotionally involved. The pain was too old, even if the urge to even up the balance sheet had never quite gone away.

He was the one who'd planted the rumor about Rosatech's closing—for a while he'd toyed with the notion of actually doing it—but despite the deliberate misinformation he'd disseminated, Rosatech was marginally profitable, and he didn't have the stomach to destroy so many innocent lives. He had the stomach to make the town's citizens squirm, though, and that's why he'd deliberately set out to make them believe he was closing the plant. He'd enjoyed seeing their doomsday expressions and watching their pitiful attempts to punish him by ostracizing him, as if he cared about their good opinion. He'd even acknowledged that his desire for retribution was juvenile.

Juvenile, yes. But also satisfying. What was the sense of accumulating power and wealth if he couldn't earn a little frontier justice with it? Watching fear spread through the town that had killed his mother wouldn't change the past, but at least he had finally called Telarosa to account for turning their backs on justice and breaking Trudy Sawyer's spirit.

Tonight it had come full circle. Tonight, in one of the few impulsive actions of his life, Trudy Sawyer's son had made the town's most respectable woman feel like a whore. First thing tomorrow morning, he would have to tell her the truth. Then he would send her back to Telarosa and never bother her again.

He gazed down at her. Jesus. She was still so beautiful. Sweet and sensitive. Would it be so terrible if he waited one more day before he sent her away? He wouldn't touch her. He'd treat her with every courtesy. Would that be so terrible? Just one more day to win Suzy Denton's affection.