Stranger in Paradise (Home Front - Book #2) (7 page)

The nightgown hissed its way over her breasts, then slid over her hips and thighs until the hem brushed her toes. She wished she had an elegant pair of satin mules, the kind she’d seen Lana Turner wear in the movies. She wished she had a crystal flacon of Shalimar to dab behind her ears and on the pulse points at her wrists and throat. But all she had was a delicate tea-rose cologne that she applied liberally along the curve of her breasts and at the back of her neck.

Her hair drifted over her bare shoulders and down her back, and she lifted it up with one hand as she slipped on the gossamer robe that matched the nightgown. Her blue eyes looked dark and smoky with emotion, and she laughed softly at the seductive picture she presented in her décolleté lingerie.

Twenty-seven years old and she had never once been with a man. Was Mac expecting a woman with experience to match his own? Most of her friends had lost their virginity during the war, unable to resist the appeal of strapping young men in uniform. War had lent an urgency to everything. Why wait until tomorrow when tomorrow might never come? American GIs had been the servicemen of choice. They were young, strong, healthy and rich. Jane had had her share of crushes on the handsome young men, but she’d been too shy and too filled with her own losses to seek solace from one of them. Two of Jane’s closest schoolmates had married U.S. soldiers and after V-E Day went to America as war brides. Leave it to Jane Townsend—no, Jane
Weaver
—to climb aboard the bandwagon eight years late.

She heard the creak of a door opening. Her heart thundered inside her chest. The steward, perhaps, come to turn down the bed? But it wasn’t the steward. The bed was already turned down and the pillows fluffed.

“Janie?” Mac tapped on the closed door to the bathroom.

She rested her forehead against the cool glass of the mirror and waited for the wave of dizziness to pass. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “I’m coming out.”

His footsteps retreated and her breath caught at the subtle squeak of bedsprings, followed by the double thud of his shoes hitting the floor of the cabin. The memory of his kisses, hot and sweet and demanding, rushed in at her, and desire once again sprang to life inside her belly.

Her hand trembled on the latch as she swung open the door to the bathroom and stepped into the main part of the cabin. The lamps had been switched off and moonlight, pale and silvery, filtered in through the open porthole. Mac, clad in trousers and an open shirt, stood near the porthole, gazing out. The tip of his cigarette glowed in the darkness.

“Mac.” Her voice was husky, not her voice at all.

He turned slowly. His breath caught at the sight of her, small and exquisite in the delicate gown, and he was glad he had the cigarette as a prop against the sudden attack of jitters. She was so beautiful as she stood there near the edge of the bed. Did she know how beautiful? He drew deeply on the cigarette then stubbed it out in a crystal ashtray on the desk to his right.

His eyes never left her. The nightgown clung to her body, emphasizing the swell of her breasts and the inward curve of her waist. Her dark hair flowed over her shoulders like a mantle of silk, and he had a fierce image of that silken hair across his chest. He imagined the dusky pink of her nipples beneath the garment. He imagined taking one of those tender nubs between his lips, into his mouth, grazing his teeth against its succulence...

“Come here, Janie.” He opened his arms to her.

His words jolted her like a shot of pure electricity. She started toward him, small steps across the soft carpet, then stopped. This wasn’t like her, such total unthinking obedience to a man’s command. But then this wasn’t just any man. This was her husband. And this was the moment she’d been waiting for from their very first hello. Why then couldn’t she take those final steps into his arms?

He saw the look in her eyes, the flicker of uncertainty. He wanted no uncertainty tonight. No questions. It was her wedding night and he owed her more than memories. He rounded the foot of the bed to where she stood, arms hanging loosely at her sides, breasts rising and falling with each shuddering breath.

“Don’t be scared, Janie.” He lifted her chin with a touch of his index finger.

Her laugh was more a shaky intake of breath. She was afraid she would incinerate beneath the onslaught of pure heat gathering in her veins. “I’m not.” She met his eyes. “I’m terrified.”

She saw Mac and herself reflected three times over in the mirrors angled over the dressing table.

He drew his finger across the line of her jaw, then let it trail down the column of her throat to the angle of her collarbones. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

She bit her lower lip. He watched her, eyes darkening. “Can you promise me?” she asked. The triple image beckoned to her, drawing her into the glass. He was built along heroic proportions, her husband, strong and tall. The classic warrior come to claim his woman.

His hands lingered, a whisper of touch, against the indentation between her collarbones. “I can promise you that if it does it won’t for very long.”

Her gaze lowered to rest on his hands, tanned and large, against the milkiness of her skin. He was honest. He didn’t tell her it would be a painless transition from virgin to wife, but she trusted he would guide her along the way with tenderness. She’d heard her women friends talk about their first time, and she knew enough to realize that wedding nights were rarely the stuff of dreams. The very mechanics involved in the act of love would render the process ungainly at best. The relentless male drive to conquer. The eternal female desire to surrender. Her fears were candles in the wind before those truths.

She swayed toward him, an almost imperceptible movement but one that registered itself upon both of them. She knew by the look in his eyes, by the heat rising in the air between them.

“Don’t move.”

As if she could, with his eyes dark and hot upon her.

Gently he eased the shimmery robe from her shoulders and down her body until it pooled, light as a dream, at her bare feet. He found the fragile straps of the gown with his fingertips and she shivered involuntarily at his touch on her sensitized skin. He slid the straps from her shoulders and the bodice of the negligee dipped low, exposing the full curve of her breasts. An Atlantic breeze fluttered the curtains pulled across the porthole and her nipples puckered visibly through the gossamer-thin fabric.

He noticed. Palms flat high on her chest, he moved his hands down over the first swelling of her breasts, sliding off the garment, cupping her, until her nipples grazed his palms. A violent burst of pleasure blazed from her breasts to the tops of her thighs as the nightgown dropped lower and lower, then joined the robe.

“You’re beautiful, Janie.” His voice was filled with reverence as his intense gaze swept across her naked form. “A goddess.”

He had expected splendor but not splendor on such an extraordinary scale. Her breasts were fuller than he had imagined, her porcelain skin softer, the dark triangle of curls more lush and inviting.

And she had never been with another man. No one had ever touched her like this or whispered these words in her ear or heard the low moan of pleasure building deep in her throat as he bent low and took one perfect nipple into his mouth.

He clasped her about the waist, pulling her closer to him, and she moved shamelessly against him. Wantonly. In a way born of hunger so deep it transcended thought and speech and logic. She memorized the muscles of his back with her fingertips, stroking, kneading, drifting down the ripple of his spine to the waistband of his trousers, where she hesitated. She wanted to touch him—dear God, how much she wanted to know the feel of him beneath her hands. She hesitated, paralyzed with fear that what she wanted to do was somehow wrong, that he would think ill of her, when he moved slightly away from her and she heard the rasp of his zipper in the darkened room followed by the sound of shirt and trousers as they joined her peignoir on the floor.

He took her hands in his, kissed her palms. “Touch me,” he said.

She found the idea as thrilling as it was terrifying.

“Go ahead,” he said, holding her by the hips, thumbs pressing gently against her belly. “I won’t break.”

She cradled him between her palms and that simple movement released a lifetime of longing inside him. He swept her into his arms and carried her to the double bed where she became his wife in every sense of the word.

“I didn’t know.” Jane’s words ‘broke the silence in the cabin later that night. “I had no idea.” She was curled next to him in the bed, her head resting against his broad chest.

Her husband stroked her hair. His low chuckle rumbled pleasurably in her ear. “I’m glad you had no idea.”

She pressed feathery kisses along his shoulder and bicep. “Oh, I’d heard things before, but never anything like this.”

Mac raised his head a few inches off the pillow and met her eyes. That devilish glint was in them, the same devilish glint that had first caught her attention in the crowd by Westminster Abbey. “What exactly had you heard?”

She laughed softly. “That it only took seconds, for one.”

He grinned. “What else?”

“That it wasn’t enjoyable.”

His grin widened. “And?”

Her hand drifted down over his flat abdomen. “That it takes days before a man is ready again.”

He arched a brow. “Days?”

A smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Perhaps I misunderstood.” Her glance was provocative. He wondered if she knew exactly how provocative. “Hours, then?”

“Depends on the circumstances.”

She found him with her hand and he came to powerful fiery life on command. “I’m impressed.”

He rolled her onto her back and positioned himself over her. “With the right stimuli, anything’s possible.”

She moved slightly, and his knee eased between her parted thighs. She was warm... so warm. With her hair streaming across her naked breasts and her face flushed with passion, she was his deepest fantasies, his darkest dreams, come to life right there in his arms.

“Make love to me, Mac.”

Less than an hour ago she had been a virgin. That first stab of pain had been as necessary as breathing, but he’d cut out his heart rather than hurt her again—no matter how deeply he wanted her. “Are you sure, Janie?”

She slid her hands across his shoulders, his back, then grazed the muscles of his buttocks lightly with her nails. “Oh, yes,” she breathed, her voice husky with desire. “Very sure.”

His wife was all softness and warmth. She held him and caressed him and urged him deeper until he forgot everything but the miracle happening between them.

“You belong to me,” he said once the storm had passed and his heartbeat had slowed to something approximating normal.

She was silent for a moment. “That’s quite a proprietary statement, Mr. Weaver.” Her tone was teasing but he sensed a thread of steel in her words.

“Does it bother you?”

His words held a challenge Jane quickly recognized. This wasn’t a man she could twist around her finger like an errant curl. The knowledge pleased her. She understood herself well enough to know she was both strong willed and independent. She would never have survived the war years were she not. But there was a part of her, more insistent now that she was older, that was tired of being strong.

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t bother me at all.”

“Good,” he said, gathering her close to his side, “because I’m never going to let you go.”

* * *

Mac awoke the next morning to the realization that the bed was moving. Not just a little shudder, mind you, but a genuine rolling motion that tipped the entire room at a thirty-degree angle then returned it level every few seconds. Winds buffeted the now-closed porthole across the cabin and the sound of rain beating against the glass confirmed his suspicions. The North Atlantic, never a gentle sea, was displaying her considerable powers. The good
Queen Mary
was in for quite a time and so were her passengers.

The storm didn’t seem to be disturbing his bride. Next to him Jane slept peacefully, her lovely face pressed up against his shoulder, her dark hair drifting across his chest like a banner of silk.

Her negligee still rested on the floor, a puddle of cream-colored satin and lace, a reminder of the fact that now they were man and wife in all the ways that mattered. Until the day he died, he would remember the way she’d looked as the gown drifted slowly to the ground and she was revealed to his eyes. The thought that no other man had ever seen the splendor of her body filled him with fierce pride. She was his. His wife. His woman.

He’d never been possessive about anything in his life before. He’d never wanted more than he could carry in his battered leather suitcase. What he was feeling for Jane was raw, almost primitive. She’d crawled inside his chest, burrowed deep inside his heart, this woman who was now his wife. Morning after morning, stretching far out into the shadowy landscape of the future, he would awaken and find Janie by his side. Hear the hush of her breathing. Smell the scent of her perfume. Feel the soft crush of her breasts against him as she nestled closer.

And it would always be like this. New and special and filled with promise.

The ship angled sharply to port and Jane slid away from him on the linen sheets. She murmured something low in her throat and he laughed softly and gathered her to him again, pressing kisses along her temple and the high proud curve of her cheekbone.

She sighed and the corners of her lush mouth tilted in the hint of a smile. He felt that smile in every fiber of his body. She had a profound effect on him, Janie had. Profound and urgent.

“Good morning, Mrs. Weaver,” he said as her soft Wedgwood-blue eyes fluttered open. Funny how dialogue he’d hooted at in old movies fell naturally from the lips of a man on his honeymoon. “Remember me?”

“I think so.” She propped herself up on one elbow and scrutinized him. “Mac, is it?”

“You have a good memory.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Weaver,” she said with a satisfied cat-that-ate-the-canary smile. “I have a wonderful memory.”

“Everything about you is wonderful, Janie.”

Forty-eight hours ago Jane Townsend would have ducked her head at a compliment like that. It wasn’t that she had any false modesty; rather she had a low tolerance for idle flattery. But, she had only to look into her husband’s green eyes to know he meant what he said. He was too straightforward, too American in his approach to waste time on empty compliments. Not that empty compliments didn’t have their place in the framework of courtship, but the ring on her left hand was proof that they had bypassed courtship and leapt straight into marriage without a backward glance.

Now there was Mac and she wondered how it was she had lived before he came into her life. It seemed as if there had been nothing before the moment when he’d first said hello. Yesterday, as they explored London together, laughing and talking and falling in love, she had been reminded of Aurora, the sleeping beauty brought to life by the prince’s kiss.

Mac’s kiss had awakened her, but those hours in his arms last night had breathed life into her soul. There had been pain, she wouldn’t deny that, but the pain had been born of love and followed by a sweet current of pleasure so intense that even now, the next morning, her body still tingled at the memory.

The ship lifted on the crest of a wave then dropped forward at an amazing angle.

“A storm?”

Mac nodded. “A bad one. I’ll bet there won’t be many passengers at breakfast this morning.”

Jane raised her arms overhead and stretched luxuriously. “I, for one, feel splendid.” The sheet slipped, exposing the curve of her breasts. She hesitated, modesty battling for a moment with her newfound sensuality. Mac’s gaze seared her flesh. She felt a wellspring of pleasure and enjoyed the feeling of being admired for a fortuitous accident of fate. The fact that he found her beautiful thrilled Jane. She’d never realized what power there was in being a woman. What pleasure there was to be found in the simplest gesture when there was a man close at hand to appreciate it.

And, dear God, how Mac appreciated! He caught the end of the sheet between thumb and forefinger, and before she drew her next breath it was pooled on the floor near her forgotten negligee. His hand lingered over her breasts, her rib cage, her belly—never touching, but close enough for her to feel his heat. She longed to cover herself and she longed to revel in his obvious arousal. A deep breath... an arch of the back... the simple motion of bending a knee... each movement brought forth a response from Mac that made her heart sing with joy.

This was what she’d been meant for, this wholehearted expression of love. All those stories she’d heard about the agonies of the marriage bed, of the dreadful indignities wives suffered in martyred silence, the endless nights of boredom as they lay under their husbands. She could fill a library with the tales of lovemaking gone wrong that she’d heard over the years.

But then those poor unfulfilled women hadn’t known her brash Yankee, had they? Jane felt sorry for them, laboring beneath clumsy men with fingers like buzz saws. Boldly she took her husband’s hand and brought it to rest on the lower curve of her abdomen. The pads of his fingertips grazed the luxuriant dark curls where her thighs met. Her husband had beautiful hands, with fingers long and tapering, sensitive to her every desire.

She moaned softly as he gently ruffled the curls, then cupped her warmth. To her amazement she was as eager again for him as he was for her. Turning, she took his face between her hands and placed quick kisses on his nose and chin and mouth.

“You’re insatiable,” he said.

“Do you mind?”

He moved against her. “What do you think?”

Her eyes fluttered closed for a second as he found her with his fingers. Waves of sensation, hot and liquid, bathed her from head to toe. She felt as if she had stumbled upon the most amazing secret, one that she was certain everybody had known about except her. “Is it this wonderful for everyone?”

His laugh rumbled through his chest. “If it was this wonderful for everyone, Janie, the world would grind to a halt. Nobody would ever get out of bed.”

“I think that sounds delightful,” she said on a long delicious sigh.

He gripped her by the waist then positioned her astride his body. She gasped at the feel of him, hard and ready, against her thighs.

“Now
that
sounds delightful,” he said when her gasp began a rolling cry of pleasure as he lowered her slowly, slowly, until he was sheathed inside her trembling body.

Beyond the porthole, the skies were dark with rain as the sea threatened to reclaim its own. But in their cabin, the storm played itself out on that double bed. Their passion matched the wild beauty of the elements, and the pitch and roll of the mighty ship only added to the pleasure they found in each other’s arms.

Later on people would say it was one of the most difficult crossings the
Queen Mary
would ever make. Mac and Jane would only remember the gentle motion of the waves and the sweet taste of passion.

* * *

Of course, even the most ardent of lovers sooner or later need sustenance. Mac and Jane missed breakfast that first morning but were dressed and ready for lunch in the main dining hall at twelve bells.

The vast room was almost empty, save for waiters and busboys, who struggled with water glasses and heavy trays while the floor beneath their feet shifted with each movement of the ship. A few hardy souls, obviously old salts, were dining in the far corner and they saluted the Weavers as they were shown to their table.

An enormous mural of Merrie Olde England adorned one wall while an equally enormous mural of the North Atlantic, in all her dreadful majesty, adorned the opposite wall near the massive bronze double doors. A blue crystal light representing the
Queen Mary
was repositioned on the mural at frequent intervals throughout the day so passengers could keep abreast of the progress of the journey.

But more than the decor, it was the food that Jane found difficult to believe. Slices of roast beef, white chicken, crisp salads and fresh bread and what seemed an endless array of vegetables and sauces and pastries exquisite enough to make a Viennese baker cry. Years of deprivation had narrowed her appetite and dulled her hunger, but both sprang to life, full-blown, that afternoon.

Mac drank coffee and smoked as Jane grappled with the choice between Linzer torte or Black Forest cake.

“Have both,” said Mac, with a smile for the waiter dancing attendance.

“I couldn’t,” said Jane, eyes sparkling.

“Why not?”

She hesitated, about to cite any number of equally silly reasons she shouldn’t partake of the bounty available aboard ship. It was patently clear they weren’t going to give the leftovers to the poor for there were no poor aboard the luxury liner. Her years of deprivation were over and done with, left behind on the dock at Southampton along with her memories.

“She’ll have both,” Mac told the waiter, taking the decision out of her hands. “And a small serving of chocolate mousse.”

Laughing, she leaned back in her seat and sipped her tea. “I shall be the size of a house by the time we dock in New York harbor, Mac, if you encourage me like this.”

“I’m not afraid,” he said, eyes twinkling. “You’ll get plenty of exercise.”

“Mac!” She didn’t know whether to be scandalized or delighted. “Someone might hear you.”

The waiter popped up at their side once again, laden with desserts for Jane, who set to work polishing them off, oblivious to the rolling of the ship or the way the silverware skittered across the table with the motion.

Her enjoyment was catching. Mac snitched a piece of Black Forest cake and laughed at her mock outrage.

Freddy, the waiter, approached them with more tea, undaunted by the incessant motion of the ship. “Bit of a storm out there,” he said, grinning beneath his handlebar mustache. “Old salts, are you?”

Jane looked up from her cake and smiled. “First time on a ship,” she said proudly.

“Enjoying yourselves?”

Jane cast a glance at her husband. “Oh, yes. We certainly are.”

“I’d put the
Queen
up against the best five-star hotel in the world,” said the waiter, beaming with pride. “She’s the best there is—queen of them all.”

There was no denying the splendor of the floating hotel. High seas or no, luxury such as Mac and Jane were enjoying was rare in the modern world.

Mac lit a cigarette and watched as she savored the sweets before her. She managed to eat heartily but with great style, as if she’d grown up dining with five waiters hovering at her elbow, eager to serve her every whim. But he knew that wasn’t the case. The solid middle-class comforts he took for granted would have been great luxuries to Jane as a girl. Hot water. Central heating. A full pantry. Business as usual on the other side of the Atlantic.