My Darling Melissa (18 page)

The batter swung hard, and there was a satisfying crack as the hard wood and the ball met. The sphere soared into the blue sky, and Melissa paced on the sidelines, silently cheering the player as he ran around the bases and returned home in a glorious slide just as the catcher bent to put him out.

“Safe!” cried a familiar masculine voice.

Cheers erupted all around, but Melissa’s attention had shifted from the game to the man who was serving as
umpire. Quinn was standing directly behind the catcher, his tie undone, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

Melissa glared at him until he sensed her presence and looked in her direction, a process that took several minutes. When Quinn noticed his wife he summoned someone in from the sidelines to take his place.

“I thought you had to work all day,” she said accusingly. Melissa’s ire was based on the fact that she loved baseball and all the players on both teams were men. She knew that if she asked to play, she would be refused, and that rankled.

Quinn frowned, more in bewilderment than displeasure, and rested his hands on her arms. “I’m finished,” he said reasonably.

Melissa looked at the field, her eyes bright with blue fire, and then back at Quinn. “I want to play.”

His frown deepened. “Why?”

“Because it’s fun,” Melissa replied, folding her arms. Braced for injustice.

Quinn sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. “It’s not my game, Melissa,” he explained. “It’s theirs—the millhands’. And they don’t allow women on the teams.”

Melissa turned on her heel and stormed away toward home. She was most disappointed that Quinn didn’t follow her.

Neither Mrs. Wright nor Helga was anywhere about, it being Sunday, so Melissa made a sandwich for herself and sat down to eat. She barely tasted the food, but when she’d finished she felt a little better. Since there was still something left of the day, she decided to make use of it and set out for the new hotel, as she’d wanted to all day. Her desire to explore the place again was simply too strong to be resisted.

Just as Quinn had said it would be, the hotel was quiet, since no one was there working, but Melissa found the solitude a comfort instead of a threat. Her mind and heart were still in an uproar, and she was so full of questions and energy and hurt that she was sure to burst.

The natural pool sheltered by the large gazebo drew her almost immediately. Inside the air was placid and steamy.
Although some sunlight came in through the roof, it was strained and muted.

On a whim Melissa took off the borrowed skirt and blouse and the muslin underthings. Gooseflesh rose all over her as the cool March air struck her bare skin, but slipping into the spring cured that problem. The water was deliciously warm and very soothing.

Melissa luxuriated, so caught up in sweet languor that she nearly had heart failure when two strong hands caught her by the waist and thrust her up against a hair-roughened, rock-hard chest.

Eyes wide, heart pounding in her throat, Melissa gasped, “Quinn! Dear God, you scared me!”

He was glaring down at her. “Didn’t I tell you not to come here by yourself?” he demanded in a furious rasp.

Melissa bit her lower lip. She wanted things to be right between her and Quinn, and they were so wrong. She swallowed her despair with all the excuses that came to her mind and countered, “How did you know I was here?”

“It was a wild guess,” Quinn snapped, but there was an easing of the dark fury in his eyes, and his grasp on her waist, although as inescapable as before, had grown gentler. “Melissa, if anything happened to you—”

She let her forehead rest against his chest and wrapped her arms around him, hiding the pleasure his concern gave her. “What could possibly happen to me, Mr. Rafferty?” she asked, and in that moment all her worries and questions were wandering far from her mind.

His hand caught her chin and raised it. His lips were moist with springwater as they touched hers, tentatively at first, and then with an unwilling, protesting hunger.

Melissa gloried in her power as she pressed her bare, full breasts to his chest and returned the kiss with an abandon he alone had taught her.

Presently Quinn withdrew from the kiss and gently lifted Melissa off her feet so that she was floating atop the warm, bubbling water. Her nipples reacted to the cold air by growing taut.

When Quinn bent to take suckle, one of his hands
supporting Melissa at the small of her back, she groaned. Her legs, weightless on the surface, parted at no conscious bidding from Melissa, issuing an instinctive invitation.

Quinn caressed her for a time, but then he left off to shift Melissa to another position, and she was so drunk with wanting that she thought she could have drowned without caring.

She jumped with startled pleasure when she realized that her legs were now resting over Quinn’s shoulders and felt him nuzzle her in a prelude of sweet agonies to come. His strong hands supported her back, and Melissa arched with delight, holding her breath against the water that splashed over her face, when he sampled her.

The joy grew keener with every passing moment, and Melissa held on tight with her thighs, her arms moving with gracious fever in the water. And then her body was caught once again in ferocious, buckling spasms of surrender that seemed to ripple on and on, far into forever.

When Melissa came back to herself she had no memory of those lost moments. She was standing, but Quinn was supporting her, his lips making warm mutterings against her temple. Some primitive instinct made her nip at his earlobe, and he moaned.

“Tell me you love me, Quinn Rafferty,” she whispered, “and you’ll own my soul.”

He made no response, but Melissa didn’t care at the moment. The evidence of his desire was plain, pressing its length against her abdomen, and she knew that words might already be beyond his reach.

He virtually dragged her to the side of the spring and laid her on the cold tiles before climbing out of the pool. Melissa whimpered, but not because of any discomfort; the chill seemed to heighten every sensation.

Quinn knelt astride her for a long, sweet time, his hands learning and relearning the contours of her breasts. His eyes never left her face; he relished her every response to his touch and to the tender, wicked words with which he tempted her.

Finally, when she could bear no more and neither could he, he fell to her, finding the shelter she offered and lunging into its heated solace with a cry of need and a powerful thrust of his hips.

“Oh, God, Melissa,” he raved, “I’ve never wanted—never needed anyone—the way I need you—”

Melissa’s release was a quick and merciful one, perhaps because he’d loved her senseless such a short time before. Still, she found a new pleasure in watching the emotions that played in Quinn’s face as she loved him, her body putting his through its elemental, reflexive paces.

He gave a hoarse shout, part triumph, part despair, when she drained him of that essence that is man’s to give and woman’s to take and fell trembling to her side.

She comforted him, for there was a kind of despondency in his satisfaction, entangling one hand in his hair and stroking his muscular back with the other. When he sought her breast she brought it to his lips without hesitation and reveled in his greed.

“I still don’t see why I couldn’t play baseball,” she fussed much later, when they’d both gotten back into their clothes. The sun was setting, and it was cold.

Quinn gave a cry of mock frustration and swept her up into his arms, pretending to be on the verge of throwing her back into the spring. He buried his face in her neck and growled, and Melissa squealed with laughter.

The warmth they’d shared beside the spring insulated them both until they were home, and they ate hungrily the roast pork Mrs. Wright had put on to cook before leaving for her daughter’s house that morning. Following the meal a belated chill struck them both, and they went upstairs to the master suite, where Quinn built a roaring fire on the hearth.

Instead of getting into bed, however, he sat down in one of the chairs facing the fireplace and stretched out his long legs, making a sound of such blatant contentment that Melissa laughed at him.

She poured him a glass of brandy and stood beside his chair to offer it.

He accepted the drink, only to set it aside immediately and catch Melissa by the wrist. He hauled her onto his lap and kissed her soundly.

After that Melissa had no need for brandy; she was intoxicated by something else entirely. When Quinn had had his fill of kissing her—and he was a long time at that—he turned her toward him and began unbuttoning her rumpled blouse. When he’d laid the fabric aside and drawn down her camisole, so that she sprang up for him in plump, pink-tipped wealth, he groaned.

Acting on sheer mischief and spontaneity, Melissa plunged her fingers into his brandy glass, which had stood forgotten on the table until that instant, and then touched her nipples.

A grinding moan came from the depths of Quinn’s chest, and he touched his tongue to her, first on one side, then on the other. The firelight flickered around them, giving the moment a primitive flavor.

Quinn finally stood Melissa on her feet, watching her in bemusement and hunger as she stripped away her clothes and then began removing his. She wanted to repay him for the mysterious pleasure he’d given her in the spring. She slipped gracefully to her knees.

He tensed as she touched him, and she feared for a moment that he would stop her, but in the end he gave himself up to her in quiet, magnificent submission. His hands were frantic in her hair as she pleasured him, and like a man lost in the darkness he cried out to be found.

When a shudder seized him Quinn drew Melissa back to her feet and took her to the bed, where the mink spread waited to receive her. Every element other than Quinn and the fire and the fur beneath her seemed to fall away, and she was carried into a dream world as he loved her. She became a cave woman, and Quinn was a hunter, and beyond the dancing firelight there were wolves howling.…

The fantasy ended in an explosive fusion of the real world and the one Melissa had created in her mind, and Quinn was kissing the length of her neck when she returned from that other time and place.

Melissa slept soundly that night, and when she awakened in the morning, Quinn was up and dressed, drinking coffee and scowling at some article in the
Seattle Times.

Melissa stretched, full of delicious well-being, and said, “It’s a wonder that paper doesn’t catch fire in your hands.”

He smiled and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Like you did?” he teased.

Melissa blushed, but she wasn’t ashamed of her responses to Quinn. They just seemed to come naturally to her, and she didn’t see how she could be taken to task for something so instinctive. “Where’s my coffee?” she countered, ignoring his question.

Quinn left the bed, returning a few moments later with a cup from the tray sitting on his desk. It was steaming and fragrant, but when Melissa reached out Quinn withheld it.

“I want something first,” he said, and his voice was low and throaty.

“What?” Melissa inquired.

He put the coffee on the table and drew down the sheets so that her breasts swelled, proud and naked, in full view.

“Lordy,” he said, with a shake of his head, and then he covered her again and gave her her coffee.

Melissa laughed as he stood and strode resolutely away, grabbing his suit coat from the bedpost as he passed it and pausing at the door.

“Whatever else you do today, buy some new clothes,” he told her blithely. And then he was gone, off on his husbandly business, leaving the little woman behind to do his bidding.

Melissa finished her coffee and then flung back the covers and got out of bed. She was about to purloin another of Mary’s dresses from the room across the hall when Quinn returned carrying a huge box.

He set it on the upholstered bench at the foot of the bed and said, “Your mother has evidently taken pity on you. There are five more of these downstairs.”

Melissa opened the package to find some of her own clothes packed inside. She was wildly glad to see them, and so, evidently, was Quinn, for he was grinning as he watched her pull one favorite after another out of the box.

“God bless my mother,” she said in a delightedly devout whisper.

“Amen,” said Quinn. And then he kissed Melissa’s forehead. “Guess you won’t have to spend the day shopping after all.”

Melissa tilted her head to one side. “I wasn’t planning to, sweetheart,” she chimed in her sunniest voice.

Quinn laughed and left the room for the second time. He hadn’t been gone more than two minutes when a furious bellow swelled up the stairs.

“Melissa!”

She took the time to put on a simple cambric dress before answering the summons, and she was still braiding her hair as she came down the stairs.

Mr. Kruger had delivered the printing press; there it sat in the entryway, big as life and dusty as a bachelor’s parlor. Quinn stood beside it, his arms folded across his chest, looking as though Melissa had just introduced him to six children from a previous marriage.

“Isn’t it wonderful?!” she cried, circling the press. It seemed much more impressive in this good light than it had in Miss Bradberry’s shed.

“I shouldn’t ask,” Quinn reflected after a few moments of strained silence. “But I will. Melissa, what is this dilapidated press doing in the middle of my entryway?”

Melissa drew a deep breath and let it out again. “You’re right,” she said with a bright smile. “You shouldn’t have asked.”

Eleven