To Trust a Stranger (38 page)

Julie paused, and swallowed again, and her eyes dropped from ac's eyes to his mouth. It was a truly beautiful mouth, even if it was man's mouth and “beautiful” probably wasn't the right word for it. She stared at it and thought how beautiful it was because she didn't want to think about anything else.

“Julie?”

Unwillingly, her eyes met his again. God, she didn't want to go back there. These memories belonged to another lifetime-another Julie. A far too vulnerable Julie. “Then he left. He walked out the door, and I walked to the door too, and watched him walk to his truck-it was a beat-up old truck and then he turned around and looked right at me and I waved, and he said I love you, Becky.” Julie swallowed. “Then he got in the truck and drove away. I never saw him again until I went to his funeral. The whole time I was there at that funeral I just kept thinking, He was my daddy and he couldn't even get my name straight. How pathetic is that?”

All of a sudden she couldn't talk any more because her throat ached too much. She blinked because her eyes stung. She felt moisture spill over her lower lids and slide down her cheeks and realized she was crying. Embarrassed, she closed her eyes and pulled her hands free of Mac's and covered her face and willed the tears to stop.

“Julie,” Mac said, and stood up and gathered her up in his arms and sat back down on the couch with her on his lap. Julie took a deep breath and lowered her hands and blinked at him, hoping the worst of her loss of control was over. After all, it was stupid-stupid--to cry over something that was so far in the past. Mac was all blurry, she discovered as she tried to focus him. The tears wouldn't stop no matter how she tried to hold them back, and as she took a deep, meant-to-be-calming breath, it turned without warning into a sob.

Mac's face tightened, and his arms tightened, and he said something that she didn't understand. Knowing that he cared made the tears flow faster despite her best efforts to contain them. She couldn't bear it, she thought, couldn't stand facing the fact that her father had never loved her enough to even make sure of her name, couldn't deal with the welling resurgence of the sense of loss and abandonment that had stayed with her all her life, and she closed her eyes, trying to block the world out along with the pain.

“Oh, God, I'm sorry.” It was all she could do to choke the words out. “I'm making a total fool out of myself, I know.”

“It's all right to cry.” Mac's voice was very soft, and it was her final undoing. He felt so safe and solid and comforting, and she realized that she had needed safe and solid and comforting for years without even realizing it. The thought brought more tears with it, and she gave up the fight to contain them, melting bonelessly against him, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face on his shoulder and crying as if her heart would break. There were vague sounds of movement in the room behind her, but Julie barely noticed. She clung to Mac like a fly to sticky paper and wept as if from a well of sorrow that would never go dry.

“We'll just go now,” George said, presumably to Mac. “Call if you need anything.” “Yeah, we're gonna go,” Rawanda echoed. Julie had all but forgotten their presence until they spoke. It was as if she and Mac had been all alone in a bubble, and now, with the realization that others were present, the bubble had popped. She felt a fresh sting of embarrassment, and tried to at least stop the tears now and sit up and show them that, though she might have succumbed to temporary weakness, she had gotten it all out of her system now, and she was far from the cry-baby they must think her.

But it was too late: she heard the sound of the door opening and closing and they were gone. Anyway, though she tried hard, really, really hard, she couldn't stop, she discovered to her horror. Now that the tap that led to her deepest, most long-buried emotions had been opened, she couldn't turn it off again any more than she could stop her heart from beating. It was as if she had to cry, just like she had to breathe, to live. The pain had been building up too long, and it had to get our. She hadn't cried, she realized, since her father's final visit, when she'd wept bitterly after he'd left because she'd been secretly wanting her father for years and when he had finally come he couldn't even tell her from her sister. She hadn't even cried at his funeral, and she hadn't cried-not one time-since.

It was almost funny that she was just at this moment realizing that. Was she in touch with her feelings, or what? The thought brought a little giggle with it that came out sounding more like a gasping sob, and then Mac was kissing her cheek, her ear, her jaw-whatever he could reach-' and rocking her back and forth in his arms as if she were a baby and murmuring soothing things to her, and she was acting like a baby and crying as though her heart would break. Finally, when the tears ended and the sobs quieted into no more than an occasional long shivery sigh, she rested in his arms, spent. Her head was buried in the curve between his shoulder and neck, and she kept it there for a long time because lying against him like that was just exactly what she craved, and anyway she was too drained and too ashamed to look up. Finally she did. She didn't sit up, but she lifted her head and looked at him. His blue eyes were grave and beautiful as they met hers, and his hand stroked her back through her thin cotton T-shirt almost absently. Her legs, bare to the tops of her thighs because her skirt was short anyway and had ridden up, were bent at the knees and curved around his torso. Her breasts were nestled against his chest and her arms were draped around his neck. He felt warm and firm and so good, so right, holding her that it scared her. She gritted her teeth and lifted her chin because she knew she'd made an absolute fool of herself, and then she gave him a wary frown capped by a prosaic little sniff He smiled at her, slowly, and his eyes turned tender. “Hey,” he said. “You're breaking my heart here, you know.” Then he slid his hand up her back to her nape and bent his head and kissed her. At the touch of his mouth, Julie caught fire. She was suddenly desperate for his warmth, for his tenderness, for the solid comfort of touching him. She pushed her tongue into his mouth, and at the touch of her tongue against his, Mac seemed to detonate. The kiss exploded. Suddenly they were both clinging together, desperate for each other, consumed with passion. His tongue was scalding hot as it thrust deep into her mouth. His mouth was hard and fierce, his arms around her as tight as steel bands. She was plastered so closely against him that she could feel the thud of his heart against her breasts. His hands, as they stroked down her back and pulled the hem of her T-shirt free of her skirt to slide, warm and faintly rough, up her rib cage, were shaking. Julie shivered in response, tightening her arms around her neck and kissing him as if she would die if she didn't. One hard warm hand found her breast, and she made a little sound deep in her throat and was lost, totally lost, to the licking flames of desire. “Oh, God, Julie.” The words were more growl than groan. Mac pressed her backward, and Julie felt the cool slide of leather against her back. Then he was looming over her, yanking her T-shirt over her head, unfastening her skirt and pulling it off, and she was helping him, pulling at his clothes too, until he was bare to the waist and she was tugging his jeans down his legs. He kicked off his sneakers, shucked his briefs, and then he was coming back down to her and she was spreading her knees for him and tugging at his shoulders to bring him closer. His thighs were hard and hot and rough with hair, and unbearably exciting against the silky smoothness of hers. His chest was wide and well muscled, with just the right amount of hair, and it made her mouth go dry just looking at it. His shoulders were broad and firm and slightly damp with sweat beneath her palms. She wanted him with an intensity that made her dizzy. But he paused, still keeping his weight from her with his knees and his hands, his gaze sweeping over her.

“Nice,” he said, in apparent reference to the
lacey
white bra and panties she still wore but possibly also to what was inside them. His voice was thick and his eyes burned, and Julie moved sensuously beneath his searing regard. Her hand moved up to cup the back of his head, and she pulled his mouth down to hers. The kiss, which she had meant to be soft and leisurely, was fierce and deep and dazzling instead. When he lifted his head she murmured a protest, sliding her lips down his neck, her mouth open and shaking, as he pulled a little away. With quick, deft movements he slid his hands behind her to unfasten her bra and pull it off, then bent his head to capture one of the full, creamy breasts he had exposed. Julie closed her eyes, moaning, and pressed his head closer as his mouth closed over her nipple. His mouth was hot and wet and unbelievably arousing as he suckled first one breast, then the other. Julie arched her back, offering him her breasts with abandon, clutching his head with both hands now as he kissed and sucked and played. She moved with mindless longing beneath him, stroking her hands down his back, over his buttocks, around the tops of his thighs. He was hard and enormous, she discovered as her hands found him, and she wanted him so much she thought she would die if she had to wait another minute.

He groaned as her hand closed around him, and lifted his head from her breasts to watch her face with glittering eyes. Breathless, aching for him, she guided him to her, only to come up against a barrier and be reminded at the last minute that she still wore her tiny lace panties. She moaned in frustration as he pushed against the barrier of the fragile cloth, ready to rip the offending garment off with her bare hands if she had to, to get what she wanted. But his hand was already between them, between her legs, touching her through her panties, rubbing her, making her gasp. Then his hand moved inside one leg opening to slide inside her, in and out, hard and fast, while at the same time he bent his head to kiss her breasts. “Mac. Oh, Mac.” Head flung back against the leather couch, hair spilling toward the floor, Julie reacted like a wild thing, squirming shamelessly beneath him, clutching his shoulders, lifting her hips in wordless supplication, feeling the heat and tension build inside her until she was shaking with it, until she was so hot she thought she would die if he didn't come into her right then. “Love me, Mac,” she whispered, her eyes opening.

For a moment he loomed above her, looking down at her, his face hard and fierce, his eyes almost black with wanting her, his fingers still inside her. “I do,” he said then in a low, shaken voice. “God help me, Julie, I do.” Then he yanked her panties down her legs and kissed her and came inside her hard, all so fast that Julie could do nothing but cling and wrap her legs around his waist and cry out his name. He stretched her, filled her, bringing her to the brink of fulfilment just by that one single act of possession. Even as she cried out her pleasure and surged against him in response he moved again, withdrawing and then thrusting with the desperate urgency of a man now bent on his own release. She was with him with every movement, burning hotter and higher until she was consumed by the inferno, sobbing her ecstasy into his mouth, coming with a fierce frenzy that made her world explode into a million brightly
colored
starbursts of passion. “Mac! Oh, Mac!” Groaning in response, he found his own release, grinding himself deep into her shaking body and finally going still. When Julie had spent sufficient time blissed out in sexual nirvana, she gradually started to become aware of her surroundings again. Her breathing was still faintly ragged but it was getting back to normal, she found, and her body was more or less functional. At least, she could wiggle her fingers and toes. The rest of her was being crushed by a large, hot and sweaty male body. At that moment Mac lifted his head and looked at her. Searchingly. Julie met his gaze. “It was really, really good for me,” she said gravely. A smile stretched his mouth and eyes. “You're learning, Miss America. That's the kind of pillow talk I like to hear.”

“You know, I kind of guessed that.” Lying naked and sweaty on a leather couch was not nearly as erotic as it sounded, Julie discovered. It was like lying naked on a bed of tape: moving was all but impossible. Mac must have seen her discomfort in her eyes, because he shifted, rolling between her and the back of the couch, then pulling her over so that she lay on top of him. For a minute she simply savored her new position.

Then she folded her arms on his chest, rested her chin on her hands, and looked at him thoughtfully. “Mac.”

“Hmm?” His hands were shaping her bottom, and one particular part of him on which she was lying seemed to be recuperating from its recent exertions with amazing speed.

She wriggled a little in instinctive response, and his hands tightened and squeezed. “Did you say you loved me, just now?” Her voice was faintly breathless from his attentions. He winced, and his hands stilled. “Paying attention, were you?”

“Yes.” He studied her face for a moment without speaking, then gave her a wry little smile. “I'm so in love with you it scares me. Ever since I met you, it's like the sun has come out on my life. You walk into view, and I feel the earth move. You smile, and I go weak at the knees. You cry, and my heart breaks. Does that answer your question?”

Julie's eyes widened. “That's beautiful.”

“I try.”

“Is it true?” There was the tiniest note of suspicion in her voice.

He laughed. “Yeah.”

Still sprawled naked on his chest, with her chin resting on her folded hands, she eyed him broodingly.

“Okay. You have one chance. Explain to me how you lied to me and used me to get information about Sid in a way that doesn't make me want to kill you.”

He met her gaze, and sighed. “I bare my heart and soul to you-to say nothing of my body-and you still don't trust me? I'm wounded.”

“You certainly could be if you don't start talking.” The look she gave him was minatory.