Shameless (The Contemporary Collection) (7 page)

He trailed a row of kisses, moist and heated, down the valley between her breasts, to her navel, then lower. He brushed the flat surface of her abdomen with his lips, made wet arabesques with his tongue, then blew warm air across the sensitive curls at the apex of her thighs. The rapture of it spiraled through her, sending a shudder of intense longing deep into the lower part of her body.

It was a craving that he tended with refinements so consummate and drawn out that they bordered on torture. Inhaling her scent like the fragrance of an exotic flower, he delved into its heart, tasting her, laving the most sensitive and delicate portion with his tongue, drinking the nectar that she released for him.

The muscles of her abdomen convulsed, and a soft moan sounded in her throat. He paid no attention, but gathered her hips in his hands and lifted her closer.

The rain fell. They never noticed. With eager mouths and questing hands, searing want and fierce restraint, they sought each other on the mattress. In lightning's silver outlining, they handled the springing hardness and liquid softness of each other's bodies, learning texture and tone, the shaping of the bones underneath, the sites of utmost response.

They did not speak above a whisper. With concern and carefully gathered signals, they dredged their hearts for grace and the gifts of transient pleasure, and spread them before each other. And in the process they wove a fabric of desire, mutual and immutable, that had in its strength some emotion so much greater than mere lust that it might substitute, for this one night, for a minor form of love.

She brushed a hand along his side, caressing the faint ridges of one of several old scars. Moving her fingers farther down, to the line of his taut flank, she clenched them, letting him feel the light scrape of her nails. He shivered, a gasp catching in his throat. She kissed his shoulder and raked it gently with her teeth, then licked the tiny sting away, tasting the salted essence of him. He pressed into her with the long, hard fingers she had wondered about, had needed. With an incoherent murmur, she tensed against him, around him, undulating in the grip of fierce, annihilating wonder.

He needed no other sign. He placed his knee between her smooth thighs, spreading them wide, fitting his hardness into her wet, tender depths.

Cammie shuddered with the intensity of the delight brought by that fevered joining. She wanted him deep, and with the need, opened herself completely to him in trembling demand. He met it, pressing slowly in and out, teasing, taking her higher and higher into rarefied heights of effort.

She surged to meet him, lifting, rocking. He increased his depth and speed. She took his thrusts, feeling herself softening with them like malleable clay, reforming, molding herself to a perfect receptacle for his tumultuous hunger. Their skins glowed with heat, grew slippery with moisture. In the black and silver world of the storm, they stared into each other's eyes with wild, near desperate yearning.

Surcease took them unaware, in sudden, blinding reward. With it, they soared: released, windblown, pulsing with the consummate splendor that is the beating heart of life. They clasped it to them and rode it to its inevitable end.

For long moments they lay stunned, with panting breaths and fused, trembling bodies. Finally Reid shifted his weight, easing from her. He drew her long hair from under his shoulder, brushing it away from her face. Drawing a silken strand down her back as if testing the length, he left his palm resting in the center of her back, where the strand ended.

Outside, the rain fell with a ceaseless drumming that echoed the throbbing of their hearts. The lightning was only a dim, distant flicker.

Reid spread his fingers, smoothing his palm in a slow circle. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to rush you.”

“Did you?” she said in husky doubt.

His low laugh feathered across her breast, making the nipple contract. “A little,” he admitted. “It's been a long time for me.”

“For me, too,” she said. Shifting, she placed a forefinger on the flat coin of his pap and rubbed, watching the shadowy movement through eyes that were slumberous with remembered rapture. Her movement stilled. “At least, it's been more than a year since — but for the rest, the best, not ever.”

He lifted his head. His voice taut, he said, “Never?”

She moved her head in minute but precise negation. “Keith—”

“—was a selfish bastard,” he finished for her. “And stupid.”

“He thought he knew what he was doing, but he didn't. You did.” She turned her flushed face into the curve of his neck, hiding it. This was one more secret that she had never breathed to anyone.

“Next time will be better,” he said quietly.

“Will it?” she said in muffled incredulity.

“I think it's possible,” he said, humor and wonder threading his tone. He cupped the gentle turn of her cheek in his long fingers and lifted her mouth to meet his. “Shall we see?”

REID WOKE WITHIN SECONDS OF THE TIME he
had set himself, two hours after he'd closed his eyes. The rain had stopped. All that was left of the storm was the uneven splatter of water dripping from the trees outside.

He lay still for long moments, consciously recognizing the coolness of the air after the rain, the feel of the smooth percale sheets under him, the softness of the mattress, the silken tickle of the swath of hair that strayed across his arm. Cammie lay against him, her hips nestled against his belly. God, but it felt right.

He was motionless, impressing the feel of the woman in his arms deliberately, indelibly, upon his memory while his mind wandered back through the night. The sweetness of her, the way she had responded to his slightest touch and least urging, the small sounds of pleasure and need she had made, all these things shifted in his mind like a dream of glory. There was nothing coy, nothing vulgar in the woman he held, only grace and caring and frank sensuality. He had been honored that she had come to him, and he knew it. That he had taken as much advantage of it as he was able in the space of time given to him was something he could not help.

He was sure that never, even when he was a wrinkled, wobbling husk of a man, would he forget how he'd felt when he knew he was the first to help her reach orgasm. It affected him so profoundly that he'd tried to give her double that pleasure for every time he took his own from her. And in doing it, had increased his own many times over.

The memory would warm him on cold nights for a long time. As it warmed him now. Incredibly.

Self-control was an absolute necessity, even if it was a bit late for it. He closed his eyes as he fought the stirring of his body. It took longer than it should have to conquer it.

Easing away from Cammie, he drew the sheet and blanket closer around her, then slid from the bed. He had left his clothes on a chair near the door. He picked them up on his way out.

Moments later, dressed except for the boots he carried, he descended the stairs in the dark and made his way along the hall. As he passed the sun room, he paused, then swung inside.

The portrait over the marble mantel had squares of light flung across it from the outside security light near the driveway on that side of the house. One square illuminated the painted eyes. He walked closer, tilting his head back to stare up at it.

The painting was life-size, showing Cammie seated in a chair of dark green brocade. Her dress was soft gray velvet with a wide lace collar that had been delicately reproduced in silvery, cobweb strokes. The painted hair was lustrous, cunningly back-lighted for a near halo effect. The face was beautifully captured; its oval shape; the determined chin and straight, aristocratic nose; the delicately molded mouth, with its confident smile. It was the eyes, however, that captured his attention. They were large, a delicate blending of green, blue, and brown with a gray outer ring; and they were secretive, mysterious.

It came to Reid as he stood looking up that there was in them the sensitive sadness of the conscious dreamer. They were the eyes of one who prefers the imaginary world she has built for herself, even knowing its falseness, to ugly reality.

It was a part of Cammie that she hid remarkably well. He might never have recognized it, he thought, if he had not seen it firsthand, as she tried to avoid accepting his help, as she talked about her marriage. Her most lethal verbal barbs were brought out to protect that inner self. She allowed no one to trespass.

He wanted entry there more than he wanted life itself. And was as unlikely to find it as he was certain of eventual death.

He wondered if Keith Hutton had ever penetrated his wife's defenses. Or if they had been erected, primarily, to keep him out.

It seemed, looking back, that they had always been in place. Teenage girls were notorious for tender hearts, but Cammie's had been more sensitive than most. She was the girl who could cry on demand, not as a simple parlor trick, but from the mental pain of living in a world where others were carelessly cruel. She was the girl who could be depended on to recognize poetic allusions, who walked around flowers in the grass instead of stepping on them, who always rescued lame ducks and rooted for the underdog.

She had changed very little from those days.

He had.

He didn't like the idea that he might qualify as either a lame duck or an underdog in her eyes. If he did, however, it made him even more dangerous to her. He would never become a part of her inner world, even if he could. He would tear it down from the inside; it could be no other way. That was how he had been trained: to destroy.

It was possible that he had already given her the greatest injury that could be inflicted. He had shown her, without intending it, even trying his best to avoid it, that the walls of her inner world could be breached. She had invited him in, it was true, but he could have, should have, refused. At least he had enough integrity left, and strength, to leave quietly, and to close the door behind him as he went.

Or maybe it was only self-preservation, after all; he couldn't stand it if he hurt Cammie. It would never be of his own will, but things had a way of happening, intended or not. He had learned that the hard way.

His wife had been a lot like Cammie, or so he had once thought: the same rich hair color, the same eyes, even if Joanna's had been more green than hazel. But what he had taken for sensitivity in the woman he married had turned out to be timidness. Her concern and loving attachment had only been used to make him feel guilty for not caring more, while her passion was counterfeit, a camouflage for desperate neediness.

Joanna, focused on her own feelings, her own limited vision of what marriage should be, had never even begun to understand him. She had been incapable of accepting what had really happened when he turned on her that morning in the bathroom. She wouldn't believe it was the result of simple animal reflexes, but insisted on taking it as a violent rejection. He could not love her, she said, could not really want to be married to her, if he could hurt her like that.

Maybe she had been right; he didn't know. If she'd been able to forgive him, he would have lived with her and tried his best to make some kind of life. It hadn't happened that way. And when she was gone, when the divorce was final and her belongings no longer cluttered his life, he had been embarrassed at the relief he felt. Joanna, it seemed, hadn't been the only one willing to accept any substitute for love and a normal life.

He wondered what Cammie would have done in Joanna's place. He wondered, but the last thing he wanted was to find out. The answer might be too dangerous, for both of them.

He couldn't stand the thought of anyone else coming close enough to be a threat, either. Even her husband — especially her husband.

What she needed was a guard. Someone outside who could keep watch from a distance — a great distance — and make certain she wasn't hurt any more.

He had nothing better to do.

There was no sign of Keith Hutton outside the house. Reid wasn't surprised. Neither Cammie's husband nor his Land Rover had been in sight when he'd gone back out in the rain to get Cammie's wallet and the pistol.

He had not told her that, of course. He should have, certainly would have, if he had known it was going to matter. He had been certain that nothing could persuade him to act against his better judgment, but hadn't been prepared for a frontal assault.

He wasn't proud of his surrender, no matter the reasons for it. But neither did he feel regret.

Less than a half hour after he had reached the Fort, Reid was ghosting through the wet woods, covering the few miles that separated the old log house from the Greenley place. The woods dripped and the creeks and branches he crossed were high with runoff from the rain, but he made good time. He should. He knew every hill and gully, tall pine and fallen oak along the way, had since he was ten and first began to notice Camilla Greenley.

It had been a sappy thing to do, sneaking around the back way to lie hidden in the woods, watching her house and hoping for a glimpse of her. Nine long years he had kept vigil, nine years in which she never noticed he was alive.

Once, he had seen her at her bedroom window dressed in frilly shorty pajamas. He had lived on the memory for weeks. Hopeless. But even now, recalling it had the power to make him smile.

A lot could be overlooked in a boy with a crush on the prettiest girl in school. Judgment would not be that lenient toward a grown man. He would have to be careful.

He would be, not that he cared. The only person who had any right to question his motives was Cammie, and she, of all people, would never know.

So involving were his thoughts that he came upon the house almost before he was aware of it. It was still and insubstantial in the gloom that was just turning from black to dark gray. He could see the glow of the security light on the other side of the house, but the windows were dark.

His gaze rested on the rectangles of black glass where the spare bedroom was located. He thought of Cammie lying where he had left her, in soft, warm nakedness, and the ache that he carried inside throbbed into insistent life. He suppressed it as he had earlier, turning it off as ruthlessly as he had turned off nearly every other soft emotion in the past twelve years and more.

How would she feel when she woke to find him gone? She might be angry, might feel betrayed. Or she could be relieved. It was entirely possible she could be glad. He wondered if he would ever know. It seemed suddenly intolerable that he might not.

There was a dark shape moving in the deeper black at the base of the house. Reid watched it with his senses tingling. There was nothing natural about the movement; it was no trick of the light, no tree shadow moving in the wind or shrub shaken by the flight of a bird.

The dark figure was a man. He was trying windows.

A soundless grunt vibrated in Reid's chest. His gut feeling had been right.

He eased from the tree line, ghosting in a wide, intercepting circle. As he moved in soundless pursuit, he felt a surge of rage that Keith would try to break into her house. What right had he to go near her?

The right of a husband, for a week or so more. That was an uncomfortable thought, uncomfortable and inescapable.

Frowning, Reid moved with dogged purpose. At the same time, he was puzzled. He had been so certain Keith had left early, just after the kiss on the porch; he could have sworn he'd heard the Land Rover as it revved away. One of the reasons he had left the house while Cammie slept was to be certain. Why, then, was Keith skulking like a burglar, trying to get at Cammie again? Was he that upset over Cammie taking up with another man?

There was something more going on here than the attention of a repentant husband. Reid meant to find out exactly what it was. To do that, he needed to catch Keith, not just scare him off.

The man disappeared around the corner of the house, heading toward the back door. Reid sprinted forward.

Inside the house there was a sweep of pale light, then darkness again. It appeared that Cammie had been roused by the fumbling sound of the attempted break-in, that she had found a flashlight. Reid braced himself for an outcry, even a scream.

The solid report of a magnum pistol ripped into the night. The sound crackled, traveling, echoing back from the woods.

The man let out a curse of surprise. It was followed by the thud of heavy footfalls.

Reid rounded the house. He came to a jarring halt as he saw Cammie on the back porch with a long housecoat of clinging white pulled around her. The shape of the magnum pistol was clear against the pale cloth.

Admiration and rage in equal parts rose up inside him. She had protected herself without his help, but to do it she had left the security of the house, exposing herself to danger. She'd chased off her prowler, but had also prevented him from catching the man.

He might, with an extra effort, still chase down whoever had been sneaking around the house. To do it, he would have to pass through the trees and shrubs directly in front of Cammie. It was a risk he couldn't afford.

A moment later the chance was gone. Somewhere down on the highway a car roared into life and squealed away.

The vehicle did not sound like a Land Rover. Reid stood with a scowl between his brows, wondering if he was losing his mind or if the early morning mist left by the rain had done strange things to sounds.

Cammie turned and went back into the house. The kitchen light came on. Reid circled until he could see through the kitchen window. She was moving between the cabinets and the sink; he could just see her head and the tops of her shoulders. Once, she stopped and put her hand to her temple, rubbing it before she pushed her fingers through her hair to comb it back away from her face.

Her face was pale and there were shadows under her eyes. Her lips were deep rose and a little swollen. She looked tousled and rumpled and heavy-lidded, as if she had had a hard night.

“Sorry,” Reid whispered. And stood perfectly still while he quelled the aching need to break into the house, to take her in his arms and soothe her soreness. Or add to it.

She had never been more beautiful.

The smell of brewing coffee seeped out into the fresh, early morning air. There was the faintest sheen of dawn beyond the trees. In just a little while it would be light enough to see, and to be seen. Cammie would be all right, she had to be.