The Harder They Fall (10 page)

“I thought you were doing very well,” she said quietly.

“It isn’t just tonight,” he went on, clearly forcing the words to emerge. “Ever since you came here I’ve been behaving like a real jerk, telling myself that you were nothing but a fortune hunter. I could see once I got to know you that it wasn’t true, but I couldn’t seem to give up the idea.”

“Why?” She could barely get the word past her lips.

“I’m not sure myself. Maybe because I have a hard time believing in people, maybe because you were Martin’s girl and that still bothers me a lot. I know you slept with him first and the thought of that tears at my guts. I know I have no right, and maybe it doesn’t make any sense, but that’s how I feel.”

Helene bit her lip, feeling perilously close to tears. She reached up and touched his face gently.

“You fool,” she said softly, “the only reason I slept with Martin was because of you.”

Chapter 5

“What do you mean?” he murmured, unmoving, his eyes fixed on her face.

Her hand fell and she turned away, trying to find exactly the right words.

“I loved Martin,” she began, twisting her fingers together unconsciously. “I know I did, but there are all types of love. If I hadn’t met you I probably never would have known the difference, never known what I was missing.”

He was listening intently, his expression rapt.

“But I did meet you, and...you made me feel things I had never experienced before... and that was very upsetting. I felt disloyal to Martin. He was so good and honorable and kind. He deserved everything I had to give a man.”

Chris seemed to be holding his breath.

She inhaled deeply. “I thought if I slept with him I could transfer those feelings to him.”

“And did you?”

She closed her eyes. “I must have been a disappointment to Martin. I wanted to please him, but...”

“It wasn’t like it is with us,” he finished for her.

“No,” she said in a tiny voice.

He reached her side in two strides and swept her greedily into his arms.

“Wait,” she pleaded.

“No,” he muttered, kissing the side of her neck. “No more waiting. I’ve waited long enough.” His lips traveled up to her cheek, then found her mouth. She kissed him back, losing herself for several long moments, then pushed him away, her palms against his chest.

“What?” he said, his eyes heavy lidded, sultry.

“We have to think,” she said desperately.

“Thinking is out,” he replied. “There’s been too much damn thinking going on around here.” He kissed her again.

Helene responded, giving up and relaxing against his shoulder. “Then carry me,” she whispered, when she could talk again.

“Pardon?” he said, looking down at her.

“Carry me. I like it when you carry me.”

He picked her up and carried her down the hall to his room. When he kicked the door open, Helene lifted her head and said dreamily, “I always wanted to come in here.”

“Why? Looking for girlie pictures on the walls?” He set her on the bed and then sprawled next to her, pulling her back into his arms. The only illumination came from the moonlight streaming through the window and across his striped spread.

“I was curious. About you.” She hugged him back, feeling the thickness of adhesive tape on his ribs under his shirt.

“Nothing to know,” he said lightly.

“Liar.” She pushed aside his collar to put her face in the smooth hollow of his neck. “You just keep it all inside you.”

He ran his hands up her back and pulled her blouse loose from her jeans. She shuddered when she felt his hands on her bare skin and clung to him tighter.

“Forget the first time,” he said soothingly, aware of what she was thinking. “It was another life. Martin is gone and we can’t bring him back, you’re not betraying him. Nobody loved him more than I did and I believe it’s the truth.”

“I slept with him, knowing how I felt about you,” she whispered, clutching his shirt.

“You didn’t know then, it was only a guess. You had just met me.” He stroked her hair. “Let it go.”

“Is it wrong for me to be here with you? ”

“Does it feel wrong?”

“It feels right,” she sighed.

He turned her face up to his and kissed her again. “Then it is,” he said, and she felt that it was.

The kiss continued until she was straining against him and his breathing was harsh and irregular. He drew back to unbutton her blouse, the flush on his tanned cheeks deepened by the sun he had gotten that day at the rodeo.

“Does your chest hurt?” she asked, fingering his ribs through his shirt.

“Nothing hurts,” he said, bending to tongue the silky valley between her breasts.

“But you fell...”

“I’m all right. You’re not going to use that as an excuse to put me off tonight,” he said, unhooking the front catch of her bra. He pushed the scraps of cloth aside and took her nipple into his mouth. She gasped and closed her eyes.

“Yes?” he murmured.

“Yes,” she whimpered, holding his head against her.

He turned his attention to her other breast and she gripped him tighter, sinking her fingers into his thick hair. When he reached for the snap of her jeans she lifted her hips to help him.

He seemed to undress her in a second, her clothes flying off the bed and onto the floor. She was glad of the semidarkness and turned her face away when he loomed above her, staring at her.

“Helene,” he said.

“Please, Chris. I’m shy.”

“You’re beautiful.” He traced the curve of her hip with his hand. “Don’t you know that?”

“I’m pregnant.”

He dipped his hand inward and laid his palm against her belly. “You can’t tell.”

“Not yet.”

“It will just make you more beautiful.”

“I hope you think so when the only thing that fits me is a tent.” She ran her hand up his sleeve. “I want to see you, too.”

He smiled, his teeth a white flash in the dim light.

“Fair’s fair,” she said.

He stood and stripped off his shirt, the muscles of his arms and shoulders rippling with the movement. He tossed the shirt on a chair and unbuckled his belt, stepping out of his loafers at the same time. Helene watched as if in a trance, her eyes fixed on his shadowy but still visible figure.

“You’re beautiful, too,” she said, when he was naked.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been called that before,” he replied, as he settled next to her on the bed. He drew her against him again and she gasped with the shock of feeling his lean, taut body all along the length of hers.

“Easy, now,” he said, afraid that she would turn skittish at the last moment.

Helene clutched him, slipping her arms around his neck. He felt wonderful, his flesh firm and supple, smelling of shaving cream and saddle soap and the unique male essence that clung to all his clothes. When he felt her relaxing he slipped his hands beneath her hips and pressed her closer. She unconsciously adjusted her position to cradle him more fully and he groaned helplessly.

“You like that?” she whispered in his ear, sensing her power, feeling it grow within her, astonishing and new.

“God, yes,” he said in a thick voice she hardly recognized.

“What else?” she asked, eager to learn.

“Anything you want—you can’t be wrong,” he replied, with a slight smile.

“This?” she said, pushing him back against the pillows, tracing his nipple with her tongue.

“You’re a quick... study,” he murmured.

She trailed a row of kisses down his abdomen, her movements awkward but fervent. When she got to his hips she hesitated, lifting her head.

“Don’t stop now,” he muttered hoarsely.

She reached down and took him in her hand and he closed his eyes, his breath coming in bursts.

“I’ve had such thoughts about you, touching you,” she whispered. “Some nights I couldn’t sleep, thinking about you just down the hall a few steps away.”

“I know all about it,” he said, surging upward and flipping her onto her back, then poising himself above her.

“Do you?”

“I’ve wanted for a long time to do this,” he replied, bending to trail his tongue down her abdomen to the downy tuft at the apex of her thighs, imitating what she had done to him until she was digging her fingers into his scalp, trying to drag him upward.

“What do you want?” he said, lifting his head.

“Come inside me,” she begged. “Now.”

He raised himself on his elbows and she ran her fingers down his back, now slick with sweat from his exertions. As he loomed above her she locked her legs around his hips, drawing him to her.

“Did this hurt—the last time?” he asked.

“A little,” she said.

“I think you’re ready now,” he said.

“I am,” she panted, impatient.

He entered her and she surged up to meet him; they both moaned aloud with the sensation.

“All right?” he gasped.

“Oh, yes.”

He began to move within her, and she fell into his rhythm, a rhythm as old as time.

* * * *

Helene woke in the predawn hours to find Chris lying next to her with his head propped on one hand, studying her.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi yourself.”

“Feeling okay?”

“Spectacular.”

“I thought so.” He grinned. “You certainly didn’t seem to be in any pain.”

She punched him and he doubled up, faking a reaction. “I’ll have you know you’re pummeling an injured man.”

“You weren’t acting very injured.”
 

“You can thank my marvelous recuperative powers.” He pulled her into his arms and she lay back luxuriously against his shoulder. “I can’t believe what a relief it is to just give in and do what I’ve wanted to do all along,” he said seriously.

“All along?” she said.

“From the first moment I saw you.”

“Me too.” She gazed up at his clean profile, outlined against the moonlit window. “Why did you fight it so hard?”

“You mean after Martin was dead?”

She nodded.

He shrugged, and she saw him struggling to put his feelings into words. “I never had anybody special,” he finally said. “Girls, sure, but nobody I felt so... strongly about, like you.”

“Girls like Ginny?”

“I guess.”

“I was very jealous of her.”

“You were?” he said, delighted. When she moved he added, “Please don’t punch me again, I bruise very easily.”

“I’ll bet.” She paused. “I thought you were sleeping with her and I couldn’t stand it.”

“I was.”

Her heart sank.

“You were?” she asked feebly.

“Before I met you.”

“And not since then?” Helene said happily.

“Nope.”

“What did you tell her?”
 

“I told her I was married. You heard me, didn’t you? You were there, as I recall.”

“Then why has she been hanging around?”

“I guess I haven’t been acting much like a blissful newlywed…”

“Hardly,” Helene affirmed.

“And she could sense there was trouble.”

“Very perceptive,” Helene commented dryly.

“I think she was sort of sticking it out, to see which way the wind would blow.”

“Have you known her a long time?” Helene persisted.

“Since we were kids.”

“Did she live near you?”

“Down the block.”

“She went to school with you?”

“Hey, what is this?” he asked, tipping her chin up with his forefinger and gazing into her eyes. “Are you working for the district attorney’s office?”

She sighed. “That was my clever attempt to get some information about your past. All I know is what Martin told me, which wasn’t much, and what Maria added since I married you, and that’s not a lot more. You never talk about it.”

He was silent a long time and then said, “I never talk about it because I’m trying to forget it.”

“Was it that bad?” she asked gently.

“Before I came to the Homestead it was.”

“Why?”

He sat up on the edge of the bed, pulling out of her grasp, and she felt a chill.

“Why dredge it all up now, Helene?” he said. “It’s over and best forgotten.”

When she didn’t reply he sighed heavily and asked, “What do you want to know?”

“Well,” she began, “Maria told me about your mother.”

He swore under his breath.

“Maria meant well, Chris. She was only trying to help me understand you!” Helene protested.

“Trying to make you feel sorry for me, you mean,” he said bitterly. “I don’t need that.”