Shooting Starr (21 page)

She touched the back of her hand to her nose, then abruptly remembered the napkin she'd spread across her lap and snatched that up instead. She wiped her nose, then her eyes, then laid the napkin on the table and gazed at it helplessly. Her eyes were still streaming.

“Caitlyn?” C.J. said in a wondering tone.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered, gulping softly. “I'm so sorry. I know you have to be wondering why I've barged in on you like this. You're just…too darn well brought up
to
ask—
” A hiccup interrupted her, and she put her fingertips to her lips and muttered,
“Damn.”

“Caitlyn—” He scraped back his chair and reached for her, but she had risen to her feet at the first sound and eluded him, pushing at him with a groping hand.

“No—don't. I wanted to tell you…something. You asked me a question and I…didn't answer. I don't know why I didn't—I wanted to tell you. I want you to know…I think you
should
know—”

“For God's sake, Cait…” Quaking inside, he interrupted her hurried and gulping babble. “Tell me
what?
Whatever it is—”

“You asked me why I can't stand needing help, and I…I think I said it was because I'm afraid of being weak…something like that? The truth is—” she took a breath and let it out, while her cheeks turned rosy pink “—I probably have some control issues.”

Control issues.
He was thinking the phrase, like so many others commonly referred to as psychobabble, had become nothing but a clichéd excuse…meaningless crap. And then she went on.

“Because of something that happened to me…a long time ago. I've never told anybody. I was raped by my prom date the night of my senior prom. I felt so helpless. He was much bigger than I was…so much stronger. He wouldn't listen. There wasn't anything I could do to stop it. But I made up my mind I wasn't ever going to be that weak and powerless again. And I haven't been. Until now. And that's why…it's hard.”

C.J. stood absolutely still while the last of her words went rumbling and echoing off into the distant reaches of his mind, like rocks falling into a canyon. He couldn't seem to feel anything, not even his own body. And he didn't notice the lengthening silence until he heard a tight and airless whisper.

“Say something, damn you.”

He couldn't, not yet, but the thought of what the silence must feel like to her after such revelations tore at his heart. He took a step and folded her into his arms. The air and the tension seemed to flow out of her as she melted against him, and he cradled the back of her head in his hand and tucked it tenderly under his chin. Eyes closing, throat aching, he nestled his face in the sweet-smelling softness of her hair and held her like that, rocking slightly. After a while, when he felt her arms come around him, it seemed to him the most incredible miracle.

“You're gonna have to forgive me,” he said in a voice like sandpaper, muffled in her hair. “Apparently you don't know what it does to a man to hear something like that about the woman he—” He coughed and couldn't finish it.

“I didn't mean to shock you.” She stirred a little, restive against him.

He drew her back in and enfolded her more completely. “It was a bit of a shock,” he said, but didn't tell her the worst shock, for him, had been discovering in himself the powerful desire to kill someone. He hadn't known he was capable of such a thing. With the worrisome residuals of those primitive urges still percolating through him, he tilted Caitlyn's head back and stared down into her face. For a long moment her silver-glazed eyes seemed to gaze back at him, in a way that made his heart leap. And then her eyelids slowly closed.

“You do know,” he said, husky and overfilled with emotions, “that I would never…that you don't ever have to worry… I mean, I would never,
ever
force you or even
ask
you—” He stumbled to a halt. Her lips had curved unexpectedly into a smile.

“I do know that,” she said gently, and, standing on tiptoes, brushed his lips with hers. “C.J., you are the most honorable man I've ever met, besides my dad. You are, in fact, the very essence of Southern gentleman…hood. It's just that—” He would have been happy to contribute his
part to that enticing mouth play, but she paused, rocked back on her heels and let out an exasperated breath. “Dammit, C.J., sometimes a woman would like a little less Ashley Wilkes and a little more Rhett Butler.”

He frowned, his brain fuzzy with her nearness. “Rhett Butler? Oh, yeah—that's
Gone with the Wind,
right?” Dizzy from the scent of her, he mumbled, “Sorry, never read the book, or saw the movie, either.”

Her hands lay on his chest, high up near the base of his throat, and her fingers were lightly stroking the place where his skin met the neck of his shirt. Her smile was slow, her voice a murmur. “There's a scene—very famous—where Rhett scoops Scarlett—you do know who Scarlett O'Hara is?—anyway, he scoops her up in his arms and carries her up this great sweep of stairs to the bedroom. And…well…” She paused, and he could feel his heartbeat tapping against her fingertips. His body—all of it—felt stretched and tight. His insides boiled sluggishly, like molten lava. “The way I figure, you've had plenty of practice.”

“One problem—” his lips were barely capable of movement “—no stairs here.”

“Then that should make it easier, shouldn't it?”

Courage flooded through her. She felt lightened by it, buoyed up like a leaf in the wind. Catching her lower lip between her teeth to hold back laughter and excited breath, she stared intently at the indistinct blur where his smile would be, and then, impatient with her stubborn blindness, put her fingertips there and felt a shiver of happiness as it blossomed and grew beneath them. His lips were silky smooth, mobile and firm; her fingers tingled in the warm flow of his breath. And then, tilting his head slightly, he took them into his mouth, one by one. Desire fluttered in her belly. Her legs grew weak.

“I think,” she whispered brokenly, “you could do that Rhett Butler thing any time, now.”

His chuckle butted gently against her fingertips, and the
burgeoning confidence in it bolstered her own. When, with a sudden, fierce movement, he turned his head and pressed his mouth into her palm, she gasped aloud, then slowly drew her hand and his mouth down to hers. When his lips slid from her palm to her mouth, her awakening vision failed her. She saw golden showers and rainbows, and then her eyelids came down and there was only lavender darkness filled with sweet sensation…his silky-firm lips gently massaging the inside of hers…tingling darts of cold fire shooting from there straight into distant throbbing places.

His hand kneaded her back between her shoulder blades, gathering the fabric of her shirt so that the other, sweeping down her spine, met only naked skin where it dipped beneath the waistband of her jeans. His tongue, impatient with teasing, drove deep; her hand skidded along his jaw and her fingers pushed into his hair, wildly clutching. His hand, pressing hard on the lower part of her spine, brought her hips against his, and she remembered his lean, wiry strength and the taut and quivering muscles of his belly.

His hand slipped farther down, under her bottom, and with that same sudden, savage motion, like a movement in a passionate dance, a tango, perhaps, lifted her up and drew her legs around his hips, locking her to him. And through the supple fabric of his jeans and hers, she felt
him,
the very essence of him, and the essential feminine part of her body seemed to remember that, too, and giddily throbbed a welcome.

She felt a swaying, like the rocking of a boat, and knew that she was being carried. But there was something she wanted to say… Dizzy, she separated herself from the kiss, but before her swollen lips and passion-fogged mind could form words, C.J.'s voice came, raspy in her ear.

“Guess this probably isn't the way Rhett Butler did it….”

Drunkenly she mumbled, “This is way better than
Rhett,” but when she found his mouth again, for some reason she had begun to laugh.

And for some reason, so had he. Remembering how much she had wanted to laugh with him just this way, she clung to his shaking shoulders while he carried her to his bedroom, quivering and snickering and hiding spurting tears and breathless gusts in the warm hollow of his neck.

It's too much, she thought. Too much stimulation, too much emotion. She wondered if the laughter was a kind of safety valve, like the steam shooting out of a pressure cooker or the teakettle's whistle. Without it, maybe she would simply have to explode…fly apart in so many pieces, she would never find her way back together again.

“I've never been this way before,” she told him, the words sticking to her swollen tongue. Her feet felt pins and needles where they touched the floor. Under her sweatshirt, where C.J.'s hands were stroking the sides of her waist, her skin was afire with goose bumps.

“This way…how?”

Excited…silly…scared…happy.
She shrugged. Her hand lay under his shirt, fingers splayed across one hard, flat pectoral, gently kneading, greedily exploring. She felt his heart thumping against her palm, and deep in her belly, desire thumped a response. “I don't know—just…like this.”
Wanting you…so much.

He didn't say anything, not at first. Lowering his head until his forehead touched hers, he brought his hands from under her shirt and, warm and moist from her body, placed them on the sides of her neck. He moved them upward until they formed a basket for her head, and gently tipped it back, a little at a time, so that his lips touched her eyelids first…then her nose…and finally her mouth.

They barely touched her at first—lightly, delicately, like the brush of flower petals—caressing with feather strokes while she held herself in a rapt and breathless stillness. Then, as he had in the woods, increasing the pressure so
slowly he seemed to become a part of her…come inside her and fill her so completely she couldn't imagine how it could ever end. And when it did end, she whimpered, as if a part of her had been wrested away.

“Neither have I…like this…” She felt his body tremble.

She understood, then, why he hadn't spoken after
her
declaration. Emotion filled her, a pool so vast it awed and overwhelmed her and left no room for words.

Her hands shook as she placed them on his sides and slowly, slowly lifted his shirt. Dazed, she thought how silky and fine his skin felt. She wanted it touching hers. Desire made her ache. Sick with it, she swayed forward and buried her face against his chest…her nose, first, then her mouth…her tongue. His skin smelled good, tasted good, felt good. It was smooth there, too; her exploring fingers found only a few hairs in the center of his chest and around his flat, hard nipples.

“You didn't turn the light on?” She wanted to, oh, how she wished she could
see
him.

“No.” His hands were sliding upward along her back, raising her shirt with their slow, massaging progress. She lifted her arms and let him pull it over her head. Her chest rose and her breasts hardened as cool air sifted over her fevered skin.

“You can,” she whispered. “I don't mind if you do.”

“No,” he said as he nested her breasts in his palms and gently kissed her, “it's not fair.”

“Not…fair?”

“For me to see you when you can't see me.”

Her breath caught; her heart stumbled. Mind and emotions reeled in hopeless disarray, caught up in the whirlwind created by the collision of those two opposing forces, joy and despair.

Because…in that moment she knew that she loved him, with all her heart and soul and mind and strength. And in that same moment knew that what she was about to do might cause her to lose him forever.

H
er cry, like that of a small, wounded animal, wrenched his heart. His tenderness for her was like a fine sweet down, softening the ruthless edges of his passion. His hands were gentle and certain; all sense of urgency and amazement fled.

“There are other ways to see,” he murmured, smiling with his voice while his lips and fingertips traced smiles on her skin. “I can touch you…see you with my hands….”

At his first light touch her breasts felt small and virginal; his mind's eye saw them firm and perfect as a classic sculpture, ivory warmed with the delicate blush of desire. But…they filled his palms with unexpected voluptuousness, and his senses with sheer delight. By contrast, though slender enough to encircle with his hands, the muscles in her torso were taut and supple. And he remembered, with a little kick of excitement under his ribs, her unexpected strength.

She was “seeing” him, too; he could feel her hands skimming over his ribs…his back. Everywhere they
touched they left a fever in his skin, as if he'd been too long in the sun. His breathing grew choppy. His muscles tensed and quivered. Enveloped in the glow of his love for her, he could feel lust crouching like a tiger just beyond the edges of the light. His ability to focus on his finer senses was slipping away; the tiger's growl was louder, and he needed all his concentration to keep it at bay.

He
had
to keep it at bay. He
had
to. Otherwise he might not be able to hear her say no.

“Cait,” he whispered. His hands were on her waist; he slipped his fingers into the top of her jeans and felt her belly quiver. “Caty, are you sure about this?”

“Yes…I'm sure.” Her words gasped softly against the base of his throat. Her fingertips were tucked into the waistband of
his
jeans, too, he realized then, and he groaned when he felt them slide around to his back, warm on his skin. “Are you?”

Laughing, groaning, he leaned to kiss her. Then drew away with his hands still poised on the fastenings of her jeans. “There's just one thing….”

“Yes?”

He didn't know how he managed to say the words. He was hard…hurting for her, in a way he'd never hurt before, his tongue glued to the roof of his mouth and his heart pounding so it seemed a miracle he could even stand. But he mumbled, “I didn't bring you here for this….”

And as he did the light came on. His conscience, shining into the darkest reaches of his soul. And he knew it was true, what he'd told himself and her. Because one thing he knew—if he'd had seduction on his mind, he'd at least have made damn sure he was ready for it.

At the moment, though, he didn't know whether to be relieved that his motives were pure or ashamed for his unpreparedness. Breath and nerves and heartbeat bumped around inside him like birds in a cage as he kissed aside
her murmured assurances. “No—what I mean to say is, I don't know if I have anything. It's been a while…”

He felt her stillness…and deep inside, her shivering. After a moment she whispered, “Are you sure you don't—”

“No—I have to look. Just a sec…” It took only a little more than that, and he held his breath while he walked her the few steps to his dresser and opened the top drawer. While he rummaged blindly in the jumble of odds and ends and loosely folded underwear, he felt her hands on his back, felt her fingers drawing patterns up and down his spine. He laughed painfully. “You might not want to be doing that…just yet.”

Her mouth was busy exploring his chest, kissing…laving…nibbling…tasting…but she murmured something indistinct and firmly shook her head.

Weak in the knees, his mind fogging, he wondered dazedly whether that meant she had confidence in him, or simply didn't care whether he had a condom or not. Which he couldn't see as being in keeping with her character; Caitlyn hadn't struck him as the reckless type. On the other hand, she was stubborn. He'd noticed that when she set her mind on doing something, she went ahead and did it, and didn't count the cost.

“Got one,” he muttered, and his belly went hollow with relief as his fingers closed around the small foil packet.

I wonder,
Caitlyn thought as tears of thankfulness squeezed between her eyelids,
what I would have done if he hadn't had one….
Thank God she would never have to know.

Laughter woven with whimpers shook her body as she lifted her arms around his neck. He lowered his mouth over hers and she felt the button on her jeans give way. Denim scraped roughly over her hips, and his hands followed, a light but slightly catching caress, like satin. Where they touched, her skin sizzled and burned as if she'd passed through fire. Her heart thundered when she pulled away
from his kiss; her breath staggered drunkenly while she wriggled the jeans down to her feet. Before she could step out of them, though, C.J. grasped her buttocks and pulled her hard against him, and her breath left her body in a gasp of utter shock…and purest joy.

Soaring, weightless, she threw her head back, and his mouth closed, hot and demanding, on her proffered throat. While he arched above her, his arms lifted her up and into him, and her legs parted and went around him as if they belonged
there,
just as they had before.

No—not as before. Now there was nothing between her and excruciating, overwhelming sensation—nothing at all. His hands stroked and molded the nerve-rich places on her buttocks and the back of her thighs. The hard ridge of his jeans abraded her swollen, tender places. Heat roiled in her belly and pulsed between her thighs. Darkness swirled around her like velvet.

She was sobbing when he laid her down. Frightened by that—she'd never made such sounds before—she writhed, bewildered and cold, until she felt his body stretch out alongside hers and his warmth flow over her like breath. She remembered the silkiness of his skin and wanted it touching her…all over. His mouth was hot and feverish on hers, but her breasts were cold, hard, aching. Her belly quivered. Her pulse pounded in places far distant from its source.

She reached for him, whimpering. His hands stroked, stinging, over her thighs, and moved them gently apart.

Prepared for his weight, wanting it so desperately, she knew a moment of surprise when she felt only the silky tickle of his hair instead. Briefly it feathered over her belly and thighs, like cool water on her parched skin…. Then his mouth touched her. Sensation drove through her like a shaft of steel.

She uttered a high, shocked cry. Her body bucked…arched…but his hands were firm and strong on
her thighs and his mouth so incredibly, exquisitely gentle. Her body clenched—everything inside her seemed to buckle, collapse, fall apart like a house of cards. Great sobbing gasps tore through her chest, and as she reached for C.J.'s warm, comforting body in the darkness, she was whimpering incoherently, “Please…please…”

When she surfaced, she was lying on top of him, with her cheek on his sweat-damp chest and his heartbeat a muted drumming in her ear. Her body still throbbed and quivered, that terrible shaft of sensation only shards now…bright little stabs of pleasure-pain quietly twinging in far-off places.

She drew a long, shaken breath…and fury washed over her. Struggling to raise herself within the circle of his arms, she pounded on his chest with clenched fists. “Why did you— I wanted— You—”

His arms tightened around her. His chuckle gusted unevenly in her ear. “Easy…easy…”

“But I wanted—”

“You wanted…to be in control. Didn't you?”

Had she? Somehow, that seemed irrelevant to her now. She felt strangely bereft as she stared dumbly down at him in the darkness. Then she felt his hand curve around the back of her head. He drew her to him and kissed her deeply.

“I wanted that, too,” he whispered. “And now you are. I'm all yours, sweetheart. Do with me what—”

She stopped him with her mouth, laughing, her nose bumping into his and her breasts brushing his chest, and he thought about how much he'd wanted to do just this—laugh with her in his arms. Now it seemed a gentle torment.

She lifted her head and made a happy, growling sound in her throat, then slowly, slowly eased her full weight onto him, bringing her knees up alongside his ribs and sliding her body over his in a lazy, all-over caress. She felt like the softest velvet…the lightest down.

He held himself still…except for his hands, which he
allowed to skim over her back from shoulders to buttocks, torturing himself some more. When they reached her bottom—he couldn't help it—they paused…asked…

But she denied him, chuckled softly and scooted backward, trailing kisses. He groaned, fearing what was coming. Her control was one thing; his was very much in doubt.

She must have known that, because after her lips had left kitten tracks across his abdomen, she moved quickly back astride him, nesting him excruciatingly in her damp feminine softness. He groaned again—he couldn't help it—and whispered, “Sweetheart—”

She leaned down to kiss him. “I want you, too…inside me. But I…don't know if I can…this way. It's been such a long time….”

And so, in the end, it was neither her control nor his, but a mutual joining…and not an easy one, nor painless—she was tight and he was hard. It had been a long time for him, too, but somehow the more satisfying for that.

As they laughed a little, dazed and giddy, he drew her down to him and raised his knees behind her to make of himself a cradle for her body, and holding her close, touching her everywhere he could, began to rock her, slowly at first, mindful of her tenderness.

His mind was full of her. Images of her, in all the ways he remembered: fairy princess, woodland sprite; pointing a gun at him; glaring silver-eyed from the back of a police car; lying bandaged and bruised in a hospital bed; sun-dusted and blind, picking wildflowers. But the memory that came to him most clearly—fierce and tender in his mind—was his own impression from way back then, almost at the beginning:
she's real.

Yes…real. Her femininity warm and pulsating around him, her body strong and supple in his arms, her lips tender and soft under his…neither princess nor sprite, hijacker nor saint, just a woman—powerful, vulnerable…human.

And the codicil, lovely as a sonnet:
She's mine.

The thought ignited in his mind, exploded and took off like a skyrocket…a shooting star. Soaring with it, he forgot to be tender and careful, slow and gentle. He forgot everything except how much he loved her, the joy and the certainty of that, and the miracle that she was here with him in his bed…warm,
real…
and that she'd come to him on her own. She'd come to
him.

Dazed and enraptured, he opened wide his heart and mind, his body and soul, and returned the gift to her the only way he knew how.

 

C.J. Starr was a happy man as he babied his big blue Kenworth up the grade of the Blue Ridge Mountains, heading north. He had it all—clear weather, the road ahead dry and dusty, a sweet and powerful diesel engine humming along under him, reefer trailer loaded with North Carolina apples, and the woman he loved—the most beautiful woman he'd ever laid eyes on—waiting for him back home in Georgia. One day soon he'd take and pass that bar exam, find a nice little town somewhere in the South that could use another old-fashioned family-type lawyer, buy a big old house with a nice big staircase and plenty of bedrooms, and then he'd marry Caitlyn and they'd see about getting those bedrooms filled up with kids.

Kids.
When he thought about kids, a face came into his mind, like a small shadow over his happiness: a thin, pale face with chin-length black hair with bangs cut straight across and great big black eyes—scared, hungry refugee eyes. Maybe, he thought, the first one of those kids could be adopted.

Yeah, he thought, smiling to himself, that's what we'll do.
When this is all over. When Vasily is put away. When Caitlyn is safe. We'll find Emma, Caty and I, and bring her home to live with us.

The other little cloud in his blue sky wasn't as easy to
define or to banish. It had to do with the way things had ended with Caitlyn last night.

He'd wanted her to stay with him, of course. He'd have loved to spend the night sleeping with her body curled up next to his, the scent of her hair in his nostrils…wake up in the morning and see her face smiling at him across the rim of his coffee cup. But she'd insisted on having him drive her back to his mother's house. And hadn't that given him a weird feeling, to walk her into his momma's kitchen while his body still throbbed with hunger for her, his appetite for her in no way quenched.

Outside, in the glow of the yard light he'd held her and kissed her one more time, missing her already, but when he would have told her he loved her, she stopped him with fingertips pressed against his lips. Those silver eyes of hers had gazed for a long intense moment into his—he'd swear, it was almost as if she could
see
him—and then, just before she'd stood on her tiptoes to kiss him, she'd said, with a funny little break in her voice, “Thank you for this night.”

Thank you for this night.
As if, he thought, she didn't expect to have another.

The notion put a chill in his heart and a weakness in his knees, so the next truck stop he came to he pulled off the interstate. Most likely he was making something out of nothing. Most likely all he needed was a dinner break.

He was sitting in the driver's section of the restaurant having his usual on-the-road dinner of chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes and gravy and coleslaw, keeping half an eye on the overhead television, which was once again tuned to CNN
Headline News.
He'd watched, without paying real close attention, the usual pentagon briefing on the military buildup in the Middle East and the war on terrorism, and pictures of the devastation caused by the latest hurricane down in Cuba. Then he saw something he didn't quite believe at first. When he did believe it his hands went numb
and the bite of steak he'd just taken turned to grit in his mouth.