Tread Softly (9 page)

When
she came out of the shower into her bedroom, wrapped only in a bath towel, she
staggered with shock when she saw Rafe sprawled on her bed, a blue toga around
his middle. He rolled onto his side on the bed, facing her. "Hello. I
think we have some unfinished business."

The
unfathomable look was gone, and there was heated determination in his gaze. His
jaw had the same granite look she had often seen before the accident, when he
took the floor of the Senate and argued for a cause that he deemed just, an
argument that brooked no rebuttal. The twist to his lips could be construed as
a smile, but there was no softening there, no hint of compromise.

Cady's
momentum carried her forward two more steps, then she stopped, clutching the
bath towel like a shield. "You'd better go to bed. You need the
rest," she told him, her tone crisp, belying the jellylike condition of
her insides.

"You're
not my doctor," Rafe answered in measured tones, swinging his legs to the
floor.

Cady lifted her
chin, gearing herself for battle. She had no idea which failed her first, her
resolve or her knees. Panic filled her and she turned to run back to the
bathroom. She had taken two steps when Rafe hooked her around the waist.
"No, damn you, let me go," Cady squealed, a mixture of anger and
sensual trepidation coming through her pores. "I'm not your concubine.
I'm not your slave," she spit out through clenched teeth as she struggled
to free herself.

"No,
you're none of those things, but you are my wife, and I want my wife this
evening," Rafe hissed, clamping her arms to her sides and pulling her back
to the bed. "Behave yourself."

"No,
I won't behave your way, damn it. If you need a woman, buy yourself one."
Cady thrashed on the bed, his arm holding her while he divested himself of his
robe. She stopped writhing when she saw the pinched look around his mouth, the
strain sharpening the planes of his face. "You should go to bed. You've
had a big day," Cady whispered as he lowered himself next to her.

"Isn't
that what I've been saying?" Rafe let his head rest on her outspread hair,
his hand coming up to globe one breast, his eyes closing. "Don't say you
don't want me tonight, Cady. I'm dead tired, but I have to have you. It's been
so long." His eyes fluttered open. "Even if I have to spend hours
convincing you, I'm going to make you want me tonight."

Cady
heard the little voice that told her he was just stringing her along, that he
would dump her as soon as he could. She also heard the voice that told her he
needed her tonight. Shutting her mind to everything but that, she lifted her
arms to let her fingers touch the faint blue shadows under his even bluer eyes,
smoothing the lines that pain had drawn down his cheeks. "Oh, I don't
think it will take hours." She sighed and met his eyes.

"Cady?"
Rafe growled softly, his hand going in tentative search at her breast as he
pulled the towel free of her body. His hands rocked her close to him as he released
a pent-up breath.

He leaned over
her, his mouth opening on hers, his tongue running across her lips like a
velvet letter opener. She welcomed the probe of his tongue like a hot knife on
her senses. His body felt like an extended throb of her own, and it didn't seem
like months since they had made love. It felt as though yesterday the same
sensations had flowed through her. His mouth left hers to course down her body
like a brand. "God, I have no control," Rafe said hoarsely. "I
don't know how long... Oh, Cady, Cady..."

Her
own body took fire at once, shocking her by the need that consumed her. She
sensed his struggle to hold back so that she would be pleasured, and she became
impatient with him. Didn't he know that she was burning for him? She let her
hands feather over his body, provoking the heat in him. She became the
aggressor as she heard him groan.

"Cady!
Cady, I can't.. .Darling." He lifted himself over her, sensing her
eagerness, surprised and pleased by her response. He played with her body as
though she were a rare violin, his touch sure and arousing. Their coming
together was blinding, their gasps loud in the stillness.

Rafe mumbled
into her neck, but Cady couldn't understand the words. She was just sure that
he didn't want her to move away from him. He was asleep almost at once.

Tired
as she was, Cady couldn't sleep. There was much to think about, a life to plan.
She and Rafe hadn't bothered about birth-control measures in a long time— not
since the fifth year of their marriage. Then they had planned to start a
family, and when no child had been conceived after a year of trying, Cady and
Rafe went to their respective doctors for a thorough examination. The doctors
had found no reason why the Densmores should not have the desired baby, yet
still Cady didn't get pregnant. Secretly she blamed herself, and sometimes she
wondered if Rafe underwent the same torment of doubt. In recent years their
lovemaking had been so infrequent that it rarely occurred to Cady to calculate
if she was fertile; her cycle was irregular anyway.

Certainly
she had given no thought to getting pregnant since Rafe's accident. Nothing had
intruded into her thoughts except Rafe's health and doing a good job for him in
the Senate. She sighed as she cradled him to her. How ironic if she were to
conceive now! Well, she wasn't going to use it as a lever if the miracle
occurred, as she suspected was possible now. She would allow Rafe to get his
divorce and she would raise the child herself. Rafe's child! How wonderful that
would be! A smile curved her lips as she held him closer, her eyes fluttering
shut.

In
the morning Rafe was gone. Only the indentation on the pillow told Cady that
last night hadn't been just a pleasurable dream. When she tried to rise, she
felt the unaccustomed ache in her lower body, the heat rising into her face as
she relived the eager abandon with which she had given herself to her husband.

She
almost skipped to the bathroom, feeling the fulfilled happiness that had been
a daily occurrence in the early days of their marriage.

She looked at
the tub longingly and then glanced at her watch. She shrugged and signed. It
would have to be a fast shower.

She was singing
"He Touched Me" off-key when she felt a cold draft. She tried to wipe
the shampoo from her face to see who had opened the cubicle door when a warm
hand began to wash her back.

"I
thought for sure you would be able to stay on key after all the coaching I've
given you." Rafe laughed as he brought the loofah sponge down over her
derriere.

"If
I had had a music minor in college as you did, I might have overcome that tiny
deficiency." Cady tried to keep her voice level.

"Tiny
deficiency!" Rafe pulled her back against him and reached around her to
begin washing her front. He seemed to take eons with each breast. "There's
a collection of cats waiting at the front gate. They think they've found their
leader for an evening of caterwauling."

Cady
wrestled the loofah from his hand and turned to face him, trying to shove the
soapy sponge into Rafe's mouth. "Caterwauler, am I? I'll show you."
She struggled with him, wanting to see the soap froth from his laughing mouth,
but even without his full strength, Rafe held her fast.

"Easy
does it, angel." He chuckled, lifting her with an arm under her buttocks
so that they were face to face. "Still think you can take me on, do
you?" His tongue flicked over her compressed lips. .

"Yes,"
she gasped, loving every pore in his face, her hand coming up to touch the
fading scar on his jawbone where he had been cut in the crash. She could
remember sitting next to his bed and counting each stitch in his face, not
really believing the plastic surgeon, Dr. Herra, when he told her that the
marks would fade. "You shouldn't lift me the way you do. I'm too heavy,
and you're not strong enough yet," she mumbled, not sure what she was
saying.

"You're
talking gibberish, do you know that?" Rafe muttered, nibbling at her ear.
"Are you lulling me into a false sense of security?"

"Whatever."
Cady bit at his chin and his cheekbones, loving the feel of him.

"Are you
going to make a meal out of me?"

"Maybe. Do
you mind?" Cady felt glazed from head to toe. She never wanted to leave
the shower cubicle.

"No.
I don't mind at all." Rafe's throat worked as though he had swallowed a
golf ball.

Cady
felt a sense of triumph that he was as aroused as she by their love play. Maybe
she wouldn't be able to keep him forever, she thought, but while she had him
she was going to love him.

Rafe
pushed open the shower door and grabbed for a bath towel, still holding her.
She pouted when he had to release her to wrap the towel around his waist.

He laughed down
at her. "You look younger now than you did at eighteen." He touched
her lips with one finger. "And don't pout like that or I'll take you here
on the bathroom floor."

Cady felt the
heat start in her toes and course upward until her entire being was on fire.
"Are we going to talk all morning?"

"No."
Rafe guffawed, sweeping her up into his arms. "We're going back to
bed."

As they sank
together on the bed, the interhouse phone rang.

"Damn
them to hell," Rafe muttered, lifting the receiver and barking into it.
"What? When? Well, you tell Bruno I said to head them off and he'd damn
well better do it. Yes. Yes, damn it, I'm coming." Rafe slammed down the
phone. "That was Sam Davis down at the office. It seems my father's friend
Greeley has mounted an assault against the senators backing the environmental
bill. According to Sam, he has some pretty big guns," Rafe mused, his hand
still drawing imaginary whorls on her abdomen. "I have to get to the
Hill."

"Of
course," Cady agreed, edging away from him. "Would you like me to go
with you?" she queried, trying to smother her frustrated longing. She was
sure Rafe wouldn't want her along on one of the first big tests of his strength
since taking back the reins of the senatorship.

"Yes,
I'll want you with me, but more important, I want you back here, lady, not over
there." Rafe reached for her, chuckling at her open mouth. "They can
wait a few more minutes. Bruno can handle it." Rafe's mouth sank onto hers
as though he had been drawn there by a homing device.

Cady
could hear a purring sound as Rafe's head moved down her body. "Are you
turning into a cat?" Rafe's laugh was uneven.

"Yes."
Cady turned her body to his, reveling in arousing Rafe as he had aroused her.

"I
think when I retire from public life, I'll take you away to a desert
island," Rafe offered, seeming to be entranced with her navel.

"You'll
get no argument from me," Cady choked, not really believing what she heard
him say, but treasuring the words as though they were precious jewels.

Then there were
no more words, just sensation after sensation, like waves crashing on a shore.
Cady heard him cry her name in a hoarse climax. The ebb tide of their love
seemed almost as satisfying as the act itself, and Cady was loath to release
him, not wanting to come back to the real world where Rafe would belong to
other people, where as he became better he would be inundated in the river of
persons that seemed to surround his every movement.

He rolled to his feet, pulling her with him, a lazy,
sensuous look in his eyes as they roved over her body. "You were so tiny
when I married you, but you're even smaller now." His fingers circled her
waist as he led her to thebathroom. "You don't diet, do you Cady?"

"No."
She wanted to tell him how pleased she was by his attention to her, but she
turned toward the shower instead, mumbling that she would be right out. The quick,
cold spray invigorated her without dispelling the glow that Rafe's lovemaking
had given her.

His freshly shaved face turned from the mirror as she
wrapped herself in a bath towel. "Of all your clothing, that suits you
best." The sensual droop to his lower lip sent Cady's pulse racing.

She
left the bathroom almost at a gallop, knowing that one word from Rafe and she
would have dropped the towel and begged him to take her back to bed. Damn the
man, she fumed to herself, she wouldn't let him rule her like that. She wasn't
an eighteen-year-old girl anymore. She was a thirty-year-old woman. She could
have run for the Senate. Cady looked in the dressing-table mirror as she
applied a stroke of eyeliner. "And I could have won, too," she
murmured out loud. She jabbed her pencil at the mirror. She had dealt well with
those politicians. Even Rob Ardmore had said so.

All at once she put her face in her hands, moaning. Yes,
but what would she do when Rafe didn't want her? Her head jerked up, her
luminous violet eyes glittering with anger. Don't be a fool! she admonished
herself. You can have a life! You can go to Greece and work in the digs. You
were going to be a working archaeologist. You still can.