Children of Dynasty (13 page)

Mariah stood between Rory’s thighs, more aware of her body than she had ever been. This tingling in her breasts and between her thighs held the promise that slow exploration might take her to heights past unions had failed to scale. Breaking their vow of silence, she said, “You can’t know how many times I’ve imagined this …”

“But I can.”

She met his gaze of desire and danger; swept back to the first time they’d met and kissed on
Privateer,
alone in the rainy harbor on Davis’s forbidden refuge. Tonight, present and past fused. His hands were everywhere and she met him. She used her palms as sensors, rediscovering his skin, smooth over solid muscles.

Rory lowered his mouth to her breast. When he circled its tip with his tongue, an electric connection to her sex made her whole body shiver. She moved unashamedly against him.

He drew back and gave her a heavy lidded look. Her hand found the steel of him sheathed in velvet skin, tightened her grip on his hardness, and tugged him toward her.

Rory glanced toward the bathroom. “I’d better …”

He moved lithely from the bed, and Mariah lay back, watching firelight play on the walls and ceiling. They had all this night, and the next …

He returned with a foil packet that he placed on the nightstand, and a small vial. When he opened the tiny bottle and passed it under her nose, the sharp spice of ginger root filled her head. With a nudge, he indicated for her to turn onto her stomach. “Let me touch you,” he said thickly.

If she had thought their play with brandy erotic, she’d not imagined him straddling her behind, his hardness against her. If she tilted her spine at the right angle, if he moved his hips just so …

But they’d taken it too quickly when they were young. Like firecrackers in a string, each caress had begotten another until she and Rory exploded and lay spent. Tonight, though she ached to be filled by him, hot and urgent, she wanted even more to prolong each exquisite sensation.

Rory poured pungent oil into the hollow at the base of her spine, thick warmth spreading like honey over her skin. He bent to spread the aromatic liquid, his hands hot on her flesh. Stroking smoothly, kneading, he eased knots in her muscles that she hadn’t known were there. With each pass, she drew in her breath.

He moved lower, tracing the contour of her ribcage and defining the curve of her buttocks. Closing her eyes, she lay taut while Rory traced ever-narrowing circles. At last, he reached the slick core of her that needed no oil. Feather light, he explored her silken folds while she choked back a cry. As though she were an instrument he played, his fingers kept up their gentle strumming until she forgot everything and arched against him, ripe to bursting.

They continued their play, banking the embers until it seemed they must burst into flame. She was ready to plead for fulfillment, but instead she found the vial of oil on the bed and held it up. “Now you.”

He shifted his weight off her and lay back. She rose on her knees, poured oil into her palm, and rubbed her hands together to coat them. All the while, his intent dark eyes, alive with firelight, followed her every movement.

She touched his stomach, and he gasped. When her hands moved lower, he gave a ragged groan. Taking pleasure in giving back, she made a game of stroking him, first lightly and then with firmness, varying rhythms according to the expression in his eyes.

He put his hand on hers and stilled it. “I want it to happen inside you.”

“Then make love to me.” She moved to lie beside him.

His hesitation lasted the barest instant, but it was enough for her to wonder if she’d chosen the wrong words. He hadn’t said he loved her, not in eight years. But as he moved to poise above her, his eyes searched hers as though wanting them both to be certain.

She could appreciate that; she had loved an eager young man, yet was aware it was too soon for declarations between them this time through.

He brought his mouth down on hers and pressed his sex against her stomach, thrusting up lightly. Desire lanced through her belly, as he whispered at her ear, “Don’t think.”

“I’m not,” she lied, but when his tongue traced the contour of her earlobe and he blew lightly on her neck, it became the truth. She had to have Rory, deep and hot inside her, must find relief for the fever that gripped them both.

Her hands helped to sheath him.

“Mariah.” He touched her, spreading her moisture.

Finally, with a ragged breath, he slipped into her. Their fit was immediate and urgent. Exquisite torture, far more intense than anything she could remember. For a long moment, he went still in her, and she savored the length and breadth of him. Then, slowly at first, he slid over her. Answering, she moved in concert, heightening her own sensation.

Their rhythm became more urgent. The room seemed to grow warmer, her fingers slipping on Rory’s sweat-slick body. His heat transferred to her, a fine sheen of perspiration blooming between her breasts. Too long denied, they spiraled higher until the sweetness became unbearable.

Her hands on his back slid around until she held him against her with both arms, straining, reaching with him … until sensation broke in a cascade of piercing explosions that shook her to the core. Rory’s mouth covered hers as he moaned his own shuddering release.

“My God,” he gasped.

Breathing hard like him, she savored his weight. She could feel both their hearts hammering.

As she began to realize there was enough air to breathe, she felt a warm daze descend. For a long moment, she and Rory lay twined, until he rolled over to lie on his back. Stretched side by side, they reached and clasped hands as though they would never let go. For a fleeting instant, she believed that it was so.

But she couldn’t think now, not with this impossible sensation of both floating and bone deep lassitude. For an instant, she was out on the water sailing, as they had been this afternoon, then back on the broad bed, lying limp as though drugged. Snippets of dream flickered like the firelight as she struggled to keep her eyes open.

It was no use; her lids were like drops of lead. The last she remembered Rory kissed her and covered them both with the sheet.

N
aked, Mariah pushed back the curtain in the front room of her childhood home in Stonestown. Instead of a vista of comfortable houses and the stand of redwoods in nearby Stern grove, a roiling sea smashed and battered the land. She peered in disbelief through the square of glass and saw a high comber spend itself on the porch steps.

She had to wake Dad so they could go someplace safe. But first, she had to cover herself. If he saw her without clothes, he would know she’d been with Rory.

A search of the hall closet turned up empty hangers where her father’s coats should be. She decided to try her old room, throw on anything to cover her betrayal.

Turning into the hall, she stumbled into a bronze coffin with the lid propped open. Everything in her recoiled, but she forced herself to look inside.

There, in his best blue suit, lay her father on a satin lining. His pale face wore the unmistakable pinched look of death. Stumbling back, she found row upon row of shriveled flower arrangements filling the living room. Darkened, dry petals gave off a moldy stench.

From the front of the house, a smashing sound preceded the cascade of broken glass on the hardwood floor. A three-foot wave washed in, swept up the coffee table and tumbled it into the television with a crash. Green water swirled, deepening and reaching like a cold whip around Mariah’s waist. It dragged her down so her head went under, but not before she saw it slosh into the coffin.

Fighting her way to her feet, she screamed, a slash of pain in the back of her throat.

The wave receded, washing her across the room, and throwing her hard against the front wall. She struggling to regain her footing and looked for her father.

Impossibly, the coffin was gone.

Rory appeared in the hallway to the bedrooms, dressed in black.

She gasped and cried his name.

He reached his hand and urged her toward him.

Sylvia Chatsworth came out of Mariah’s childhood room. Wearing the black velvet robe Rory had given Mariah, turned inside out to reveal crimson silk, she ran a caressing hand through Rory’s hair and handed him a Scotch on the rocks.

Mariah tried to run, but her legs were useless stumps. Another wave washed in and piled up in the hall. The last she saw of Rory and Sylvia they were chest-deep in swirling water, embracing and looking at her with mournful eyes.

Struggling out of the land of nightmare, Mariah fought off the bed covers. Sweat coated her nude body, the sheets felt sticky. Opening her eyes, she found dawn light wedging in through an open sliding door.

Chest heaving, she sat up and realized she was alone in the big bed. Thick mist lay over the Ventana wilderness. Damp nipped her nose. “Rory!” she cried.

“Out here,” called his deeply familiar masculine voice.

Her heart pounding from ghoulish images, she saw him soaking in the sunken bath. With steam rising, he blurred as though he occupied another dimension. Last night’s lovemaking now seemed as indistinct and far away.

They had both been sucked into the illusion that the Porsche was fast enough to outrun reality. But their world had followed them, creeping down the coast and up the mountain to surround them like the fog.

She swung her legs off the side of the bed, found her robe, and wrapped herself from neck to ankles. She went to the door and stepped out, her feet cold on the slate tile. “I dreamed my father died.”

“No!” Rory cleaved out of the water in one smooth motion. He stood naked and dripping before her, every woman’s dream.

Though tempted to slide back into their weekend fantasy, she couldn’t do it. “I need to go home and check on him. We have to leave now.”

His hands were wet on her velvet-clad arms, the damp soaking through. “It was a dream.” He tried to gather her against his bare chest.

She resisted. “I’m sorry, but it feels so real.”

Rory nodded toward the bedside phone. “Call him.”

Almost stumbling, she made it inside and raised the receiver in a shaking hand.

Hotel Nikko’s operator told her John Grant and Tom Barrett had checked out the night before. No one answered at home or at Tom’s house. Cellular customer Grant was “out of range,” as were Tom and Wendy. It was far too early to think her father and Tom were at the office on a Saturday, but she tried there.

While she made the calls, Rory slipped on the inn’s white terry robe and paced, his sinewy feet leaving deep prints in the thick pile carpet. His hands shoved his black hair into disarray. When she placed the phone back in the cradle for the last time, he turned to her. “He’s all right. You know he is.”

She fought tears. “I wish I did. But Dad and I have always been so close; maybe the dream was a sign he’s in trouble.” Though Rory came and gripped her shoulder, urging her to believe she was overreacting, the image of her father’s pale and lifeless face seemed too real.

Rory drove the Porsche hard on the northbound curves of the Big Sur Highway. By daylight, the rugged mountain coast showed off its splendor, jade cliffs slashed by veins of white quartz, turquoise swells of sea …

This wasn’t what he’d expected from this morning. He and Mariah should have made love, breakfasted in bed, made love again, and showered together, soaping each other’s backs. Instead, they’d crammed their newly purchased belongings back into the Carmel shop sacks and hit the road.

Passing back through the appealing seaside village, he wished he’d tried harder to talk her out of cutting their weekend short. He didn’t want to take her back where news crews pursued her and John Grant hid out from the press in a hotel. Rather, he yearned to keep her safe with him.

Unfortunately, that was the stuff of fantasy. On Monday, it would be back to Grant Development for her, and DCI for him, where a slow poison ate at the joy and pride he’d had in his work at Golden Builders.

One thing he did know. First, both he and Mariah had to tell their fathers in no uncertain terms that they were going to see each other. Maybe he’d sworn off love, seeing it as the equivalent to handing a woman a blade to slice him with, decided on bachelorhood to keep out of a hopeless situation like his mother was in … but if he and Mariah did not explore the “what if,” as he’d called it, they would compound their past mistake of breaking up. As for conflict of interest between Grant and DCI, though it would detract from the pleasure of sharing his work with her, he and Mariah could make a vow not to talk shop.