Secrets Rising (18 page)

Her eyes, greenish blue like the tumultuous sky, blazed with their own storm. "Stop telling me things for my own good. Stop warning me about how badly my search could turn out. Stop telling me to go home. Stop telling me to make you stop touching me. My whole life has gone crazy, and all you can do is tell me what not to do. That's not good enough. I have to do something. I have to find something that makes sense."

"You think making love would make sense?" The rain came faster now, streaking down both their faces, but she didn't seem to notice and he didn't care.

"I don't know. Do you think wanting to make love and not doing it makes sense? Do you think standing in the rain arguing about it makes sense?"

"No. It doesn't. Come on. Let's go back to the motel." He urged her toward the car, knowing the ride would give them time for their passion to cool, for her to decide if this was really what she wanted to do.

Rebecca shook her head, refusing to let Jake steer her to his car. Once they got inside the familiar vehicle, they'd both have time to think about what they were doing, and right now she didn't want to think. Right now she wanted to touch another person and make a connection, no matter how temporary. She wanted to touch Jake, to find that tentative connection with him that she'd found so briefly yesterday in the cemetery.

She pointed to the small shack where they'd seen the boy take his lawnmower the day before.

"You're crazy!" he shouted as the storm grew in fury around them.

She turned, ran across the wet grass to the shed, flung open the door and darted inside, breathing a short prayer of gratitude that small towns didn't feel the compulsive need to lock every door as they did in big cities.

For an instant she thought Jake wasn't going to follow her, that he didn't want her as badly as she wanted him.

Then he charged inside, almost tripping over the lawnmower, and closed the door behind him. His action plunged the room into semi-darkness with only one small window letting in the dim light and intermittent flashes from outside. Other gardening tools leaned in one corner, and a wooden table held plastic jars and bottles.

Jake pulled her into his arms and kissed her, his lips wet and warm and demanding, and she surged against him. When they'd kissed yesterday, she'd been bereft after the fleeting encounter ended. Today she accepted that fleeting encounters would be all they'd have, and she was going to savor every second of pleasure, store it up against whatever new pain awaited her in this futile search she'd undertaken for her family, for somewhere to belong. For the next few minutes, she belonged with Jake in the tool shed of this park. Maybe that was the extent to which any person could belong to another, could touch another.

She opened herself to him, tasting the rain on his lips, inhaling the scent of wet denim and musky desire, letting the tumult inside merge and escalate with the booming thunder, the sizzling lightning and pounding rain outside.

With one movement, he pulled her dress over her head and tossed it aside. His hands cupped her breasts, and his mouth fastened on a nipple, the suction creating an unbearably delicious streak of internal lightning that spread along every nerve ending in her body, centering between her legs, fueling the urgency that already tormented her.

She tangled one hand in his hair and clutched his shoulder with the other, needing to touch him, to feel the solidity of his body, to confirm that he was real and substantial and with her, not separated by a veil the way she'd felt separated from everybody recently.

His tongue teased the other nipple as he lifted one side of her skirt and slid his hand inside her panties, urging her legs apart. He was completely in control, detached and uninvolved even in the most intimate act two people could perform, making love to her while staying fully clothed himself.

She clasped her hand around his, stopping him. He straightened and looked at her, his eyes half-closed and smoky. "You want me to stop?" His voice was as smoky as his eyes, and his breathing came ragged and harsh. "You want me to stop now?"

She groped for the buttons of his shirt. "No, I just want to be together with you. I need to touch all of you. I need to do the same things to you that you're doing to me so we're at the same place together."

He yanked his shirt over his head, and Rebecca heard several buttons ping on the wooden floor. Before she could reach for the hairs on his chest that she'd longed to explore since that first night he'd answered his door without a shirt, he unzipped his jeans and pulled them off. His skimpy black briefs barely contained his bulging erection.

She unbuckled her own belt and let it drop to the floor, then reached behind her to unfasten her skirt, but this time he stopped her.

Kneeling, he lifted the skirt and slid her bikini panties down her legs, tracing their path with kisses, then raised each foot in turn and slipped the underwear off. Finally he plunged his hand beneath her skirt and slid one finger inside her while his mouth again sought her nipple. Frenzied, tortured pleasure swept over her, pulsing in an elemental rhythm that matched the rain pelting the roof and the window.

With trembling hands, she reached for him, wrapping her fingers around the bulge in his shorts, needing to take him to the same place he was taking her.

He groaned and pulled away from her and for a moment she tensed. This couldn't be one-sided. They had to be together. He couldn't be detached.

"I'm ready to explode, and I don't want it to be in your hand." He slid off his briefs, freeing his erection to rise against his taut stomach. "Pull off your skirt," he growled. "I want to see the body I've been dreaming about every night that leaves me with an erection every morning."

The knowledge that he had been dreaming of her, wanting her as she wanted him, further inflamed her, made her feel special, that he wanted
her
, not just sex but sex with her. She unfastened her skirt and let it pool on the floor at the same moment as a bright flash of lightning lit the room. His naked, aroused body was magnificent, and she ached to have him inside her, a part of her.

He ran his fingers gently over her breasts, the hollow of her waist, along her hips. "You're beautiful," he said, "just like in every dream I've had about you."

He cupped her bottom and pulled her against him, his hardness against her stomach, her breasts against his chest. His lips claimed hers, his tongue darting inside her mouth to tangle with hers, pushing in then out, a rehearsal of the ultimate penetration. She clutched him to her, her hands on the bare skin of his back, her body arching against his, her desire a shrieking hurricane.

When she thought she could bear it no longer, he stooped to retrieve his shirt from the floor and threw it over the edge of the table. "I don't want you getting splinters in that gorgeous bottom." He bent again to take a foil square from the pocket of his jeans.

He was a gentleman, considerate of her needs. For this one moment, this one act, she was important to him, special. However many women Jake might have had or would have in the future, right now she was the one he wanted.

She leaned back, and he sheathed himself inside her with one deep lunge, filling her, making her aware of every inch of her that he touched.

"I'm sorry," he gasped. "I meant to go slow, but I can't. You've got me completely out of control."

"Don't apologize. Don't stop!" Her muscles clenched around him involuntarily, urging him to continue.

His hands cupped her bottom again, cushioning her against the table and pulling her closer as he thrust in and out, each stroke bringing her higher and higher, whirling in a tornado of increasing sensations. The storm outside had reached a peak, the lightning flashing almost continuously, creating a strobe-like effect that made his movements appear jerky, an illusion that contrasted sharply with and heightened the smooth silkiness of Jake moving inside her.

She clutched his arms and met his thrusts, until the world exploded in a white-hot burst of flame and roaring thunder, and she wasn't sure if the storm outside had risen along with their fury or if it all came from inside.

As Jake held her, his head drooped on her shoulder, his rapid breath on her neck gradually slowing, Rebecca became aware of her uncomfortable position against the table.

"I need to move," she whispered, straining against him.

Jake stepped back and pulled her upright. "I'm sorry."

She tensed as he said the same thing he'd said after their first kiss, the words that had negated the entire act. Logically, she knew he wasn't apologizing for their lovemaking, just for her discomfort.

She knew that logically, but his repetition of the apology brought her down from the high she'd been on, back to the small, dim shack with the rain pelting outside and Jake stooping to pick his clothes up from the floor.

Lightning from a distance brightened the room briefly and weakly. The storm had spent its fury leaving only the rain behind.

Jake straightened, holding a pile of their mingled clothing. "They're a mess from the rain and the dirty floor. I guess the good news is, we'll get washed off when we run back to the car in this downpour."

His voice was impersonal, as though talking about laundry rather than clothing discarded in the haste of lovemaking. The connection between them—tenuous at best—now seemed weaker than before.

Suddenly aware of her state of nakedness in front of this lover who'd reverted to being a stranger, Rebecca disentangled her underwear from the pile and began to dress, keeping her gaze lowered.

Making love with Jake had been the most incredible experience of her life, but now that it was over, now that her body was satisfied and her adrenaline ebbing, embarrassment and emptiness crept over her. Had she really behaved so wantonly with him, let herself go so completely...lost every shred of control?

For those extraordinary moments, she'd felt connected. Now that it was over, he seemed more remote than ever which shouldn't bother her, but it did. She'd told herself she only wanted that temporary physical connection, would be satisfied with that much.

Apparently she'd lied to herself.

Post coitum omne animal triste
.

After sex, every animal is sad.

Was that all it was, the normal backlash after reaching such a peak?

Or was it that she was faced once more with her aloneness, the knowledge that even the ultimate act of joining with another still left her alone?

They finished dressing, and Jake opened the door then turned to her. He lifted one hand and cupped her cheek. His eyes, dark like the storm clouds outside, flicked over her face as if searching for answers in her chin, her lips, her forehead, avoiding her eyes. He turned away from her. "You deserve better than this." He waved a hand toward the dim interior. "Sex in a gardening shed. I should have been able to restrain myself until we could at least get back to the motel and have a bed."

Sex
. He couldn't even refer to it as making love.

She shrugged and refrained from reminding him that she had been the one who'd insisted they go into the shack. "This place beats that crummy motel room, hands down," she said flippantly.

He smiled and finally met her gaze. "You could be right. Are you ready to head back to that crummy motel room?"

She nodded, and they dashed through the rain to the car. She was glad he hadn't suggested waiting until it let up. The shack had become confining and claustrophobic. She had to get away as quickly as possible, even if it meant going back to the dreary motel.

She had to get away from the memory of that brief, glorious touching that only resulted in more distance.

Jake drove in silence back to the motel.

He'd completely lost his mind, making love to Rebecca in that hovel. She deserved a five hundred dollar a night room with a king size bed and a Jacuzzi. She deserved a man who had something to give instead of one who could only take.

She deserved someone who, having taken once, at least had enough control, enough decency to be satisfied and not to be aching to hold her again, love her again, to wrap her in his arms and his body and keep her until everything was finally finished, however long or short that might be.

And therein lay the problem. Rebecca hadn't yet accepted that forever had no real meaning in human relationships, that everything had an end, that a moment of touching another was the best anybody could hope for. She was bound to learn it sooner or later. But he didn't want to be the one to teach her.

He stole a glance at her as she sat beside him in the car. She stared straight ahead, her wet hair clinging to her cheeks and shoulders without altering in the slightest her look of pride and vulnerability.

Making love to her had been a major mistake. Instead of quenching the fire, it had only fanned the flames. Now he knew what her lips felt like beneath his. He knew the firmness and satiny texture of her breasts so temptingly outlined by her wet dress. And he knew the silky heat between her thighs, knew how it could steal his common sense and take him to heights he'd never before imagined.

Rebecca wasn't going back to Dallas, and he wasn't sure how he was going to keep his hands off her. Especially now.

He parked in front of the motel.

"I'll go in and call Mrs. Griffin. See what I can find out," he said and waited tensely for her response, for the possibility that she'd insist on coming to his room to hear the conversation.

He wanted her with him, alone in his room, in his bed, wanted her more than he'd known it was possible to want a woman. And wanted just as badly for her to stay out of his room, to remove the temptation he had no will power to resist, the void in her soul that he couldn't fill. That nobody could in the long run.