White Satin (5 page)

“We don’t all plan and plot our lives to the last detail,” she said defiantly. “They were happy. And, if I recall, you attended a good many of those parties. I remember seeing you any number of times.”

“Yes, you would.” There was a curiously tender curve to his lips. “From behind the potted plants at the head of the stairs or peeping out around that white birch tree by the pond. I used to worry
about you getting too cold, but you seemed to be bundled up warmly.”

“Yes, I was always warm enough,” she said absently. “You knew I was there watching? I didn’t think anyone noticed.”

“Perhaps I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been so god-awful bored and looking for a distraction.” He took her arm and propelled her down the three steps into the sunken living room and over to the couch before the fireplace. “I’d just won the Olympic gold and was the star of an ice show. I suppose I was curious to taste all the delights of fame and adulation.” He dropped down on the couch. “It got old very fast. I wasn’t used to people making pleasure their prime motivation for existence. I got so I looked forward to seeing your fiery red hair and grave dark eyes behind that potted palm. Once you weren’t there, and it bothered me all evening. I couldn’t ask Nan or Jeffrey because obviously they didn’t realize you were spying on them. I finally cross-examined one of the servants and found you were sick with a virulent case of the flu.” His lips tightened. “Not that it changed
any of your parents’ social plans. They didn’t even try to keep the noise down at the party.”

Dany sank down into the deep armchair across from the couch. “You sound like you didn’t even like them,” she whispered, her eyes enormous in her thin face.

“I didn’t,” he said bluntly, leaning back against the midnight-blue velvet cushions. “They were selfish, egotistical, lazy, and even a little stupid. I disliked them as much as the crowd they surrounded themselves with.”

“Of which you were part,” she said tartly. “You didn’t have to go to their parties if you didn’t like them.”

“I was a little lost.” His silver-green eyes were thoughtful as they stared into the fire. “I was only twenty years old, and after working and struggling all my life, I suddenly had it all. Money, fame, women—everything I wanted was laid at my feet.” His lips twisted bitterly. “And I discovered that I didn’t really want any of it. It wasn’t enough.”

Her troubled eyes widened. “Is that how it’s going to be for me?” she asked, biting her lip.
“After all the work and worry, is it all going to be empty?”

“No.” His answer was reassuringly swift. “We’re as different as night and day. Darkness and sunlight. You love skating. It’s part of you and always will be. It enhances and completes you.” He met her eyes steadily. “It was never that to me. I used it to escape from poverty and from being a victim. It was the only emotional outlet I allowed myself when I was growing up. I knew that emotion must exist or the skating had no depth or color.” He shrugged. “Then, after I’d gained all the rewards I’d worked for, I found I didn’t like the idea of displaying my emotions for the audience’s delectation.” He paused. “I’m not a very generous man, Dany. I’m much more likely to take than give.”

“Why are you telling me all of this?” His expression was set and tense, almost pained, and she knew he wouldn’t ordinarily reveal anything like this about himself.

“Because it’s necessary,” he said gratingly. “Do you think I’m enjoying this? I don’t know how to
open up and let anyone get close to me. But I have to let you in, dammit.”

“Why?”

“Because if I don’t, you’re going to fall into Kowalt’s bed.” He paused. “And then I’ll probably kill him.”

The words were said with deadly impassivity that was more frightening than anger. She shivered. “You can’t mean that.”

“I mean it,” he said. “When did I ever say anything to you I didn’t mean? That’s why I brought you here. I have to make sure you understand what you’re dealing with.” He closed his eyes, and for a moment there was a look of unutterable weariness on his face. “I don’t want to hurt you, Dany. That’s the last thing I want. But it’s been so damn
long.
” His eyes opened, and there was a glimmer of pain in their depths. “Too long. I can’t wait anymore.”

“Wait for what?” Her throat was so tense, she could scarcely get out the words.

“You,” he said simply. “It’s always been you.”

She shook her head in instinctive rejection.
“No.” She wrapped her arms about herself to still her trembling. “It’s not possible, you never said—”

“I told you it wasn’t easy for me to show my feelings,” he said harshly. “That doesn’t mean I don’t have them. I’ve known ever since you were a little girl that you were going to be mine someday. Mine in all the ways there are. Since the night I first spoke to you. Do you remember that evening, Dany?” He shook his head impatiently. “How could you? You were only six years old.” He gazed unseeingly into the flames. “It was snowing that day too. There was a cocktail party going on inside, and I was feeling practically claustrophobic, so I got my jacket and decided to walk down to the pond to get some air. You were dressed in jeans and a white wool sweater, and your ponytail was like a flame as you practiced your spins on the ice. You looked so grave and intent, yet there was more warmth and vitality in you than I’d ever seen in a human being before. Snowflakes were falling all about you. It was almost twilight and you shone like a bright beacon. I stood on the bank just watching you, and then you saw me and came skating over.”

Anthony’s lips curved in reminiscence. “You smiled at me and said, ‘I know who you are. You’re Anthony Malik and you won a gold medal. I’m Dany Alexander and one day I’m going to win one too. And then everyone will love me.’ ” He looked up from the flames to meet her eyes. “I knew then that one person already … cared for you and was going to for the rest of his life.” His hands clenched involuntarily. “And I knew that it was going to be hell on earth waiting for you to get through all the years that kept us apart. I’ve never been a patient man, Dany.”

“That’s crazy.” She shook her head in bewilderment. “Things don’t happen like that.”

“I didn’t think so either.” His lips twisted in a sardonic smile. “You couldn’t ask for a more cynical or pragmatic man than I was at that time. I believed I could fashion the world and everything in it to suit myself. Needless to say, it came as something of a shock to run across fate in the form of a six-year-old imp who thought of me as just another grown-up.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” she repeated dazedly. “Why me?”

He shrugged. “I just knew you were the only one who could complete me,” he said haltingly, as if the words were difficult to get out. “I told you I couldn’t release emotion like other people. I’ve never been able to care for anyone. You weren’t far wrong when you accused me of being an ice-man. You were everything that I wasn’t: warm, open, giving.” He paused. “Loving. I wanted that warmth, that love. I knew it then and I know it now.”

“I can’t—”

“I’m not asking you to love me,” he said gravely. “I realize I’m not an easy person to love. You may even find it impossible. I’m just telling you I want it. There are other things that we can give each other. I’m not trying to wring any commitments from you. I just want you to know that you’re going to belong to me and that you’re going to
want
to belong to me.”

“You can’t force emotions like that,” she said huskily. Her chest was tight, and it was painful even to breathe.

“I don’t intend forcing anything,” he said with composure. “You’re going to come to me of your
own free will. You’re going to want to be in my arms as much as I want you there. Did you think I’d want anything else?” He shook his head, a slight smile curving his lips. “No gratitude, no obligation, no fear.” His intent glance caught her slight stiffening at the last word, and his voice deepened to gentleness. “Yes, I’ve always known you were a little afraid of me. I suppose it was instinctive. You could sense the intensity of what I was feeling even if you couldn’t understand it. There was so much warmth in you that perhaps you were even afraid if you came too near, I’d extinguish that flame.” There was a fitful spark in his eyes. “I won’t do it, you know. If anything, I’m liable to burn you up.” He stretched out his hand. “Come here and see.”

His eyes were glowing softly, not glittering as they usually were, and they held her own with mesmerizing force. His expression was gentle and more vulnerable than she’d ever seen it. She stood up and moved with a dreamlike lethargy to stand before him. Still holding her gaze, he turned his palm upward. “Come,” he coaxed, and hesitantly she put her hand in his.

She almost jerked it back as she felt the warm, throbbing electricity that seemed to leap between them, but his hand had closed securely around her own. “See, nothing to be afraid of. What you feel is only what’s always going to happen between us from now on. It’s kind of a melting, one into the other.”

“You’re speaking to me as if I were a little girl,” she said. The firelight was playing across the boldness of his high cheekbones, and she could see it mirrored in his eyes. She had a fleeting memory of a torch’s flame captured within moonlit ice, and she felt suddenly breathless.

He parted his legs and with a gentle tug pulled her to the floor so that she was kneeling between them. “I know you’re not a little girl.” He leaned forward, and she could see the sudden cadence of his heartbeat in the hollow of his throat. “Sometimes when you’re frightened or disturbed about something, you lift your chin so proudly that your throat arches like that of a startled gazelle.” His thumb rested lightly on that pulse point, feeling the erratic fluttering. “Lovely.”

“I don’t know why I’m letting you do this.” She
moistened her lips nervously. “I think I must be crazy too. I was so angry at you only a little while ago.”

“You’re letting me do it because you want it.” He tilted her head, cradling her cheeks in his hands to gaze down into her eyes. “You may have managed to smother it beneath a landslide of other emotions, but you want me too, Dany.” His fingertips were brushing lazily over her cheekbones. “Sometimes I believe I’m so sensitive to what you’re thinking and feeling that it’s as if I’m inside of you looking out.” His thumbs moved down to part her lips, rubbing against the warm moisture of her tongue. “I could tell the very minute you began to want me. You were confused and scared, but the wanting was there.” He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “I was teaching you pair skating and we were working on that overhead split. My hands were on your inner thigh, supporting you. I’d held you like that a thousand times but suddenly something changed. You tensed beneath my hand, and I glanced up and you were looking down at me, and it was all there in your face.” His thumb moved lazily over the edge of her
teeth. “I felt as if someone had punched me in the stomach. I’d been still thinking of you as a child, and there you were with that look in your eyes that meant I could have you, that I could teach you to belong to me as a woman.”

“You sent me away from Briarcliff,” she said haltingly. “I could see by your expression I’d given myself away. I thought I had made a complete fool of myself.”

He shook his head. “It was either send you away or ruin everything I’d waited for.” His voice was harsh with frustration. “You were only fourteen, for heaven’s sake! If I’d kept you with me, you’d have been my mistress by the time you were sixteen. I wouldn’t have been able to help myself.”

No, Dany thought, and she wouldn’t have been able to help herself either. She’d been trying to blot out that painful memory from her consciousness for the last six years, yet he had only to touch her as he was doing now and she remembered the deep throbbing ache for completion she’d known that afternoon when she’d crossed the boundary from childhood to womanhood. “It won’t work, you know,” she said, closing her eyes
as she felt the waves of heat wash over her. “We can’t found a relationship on something as insubstantial as desire. As you said, we’re complete opposites.”

“We can start there.” His thumb was beneath her tongue, urging it to venture from her lips. “I feel a hell of a lot more than desire, but I can accept that from you and build on it.” He slowly lowered his head, his warm lips rubbing sensuously against her tongue. “I’ll try to make it so good for you, it won’t matter to you if you can’t feel anything deeper for me.” He inhaled deeply. “Now, hush. I want to kiss you, taste you.”

His lips closed slowly, carefully on hers, fitting and blending with a gentleness that was all the more moving for the leashed savagery she could sense beneath it. His breath was warm and minty. His tongue, as it licked teasingly at the corner of her mouth and then traced the fullness of her lower lip, was exquisitely arousing. He raised his head and drew a deep, shaky breath. “Do you know how often I’ve wanted to do that? How I’ve lain awake and wondered how you’d taste? How you’d feel? I’ve known your body so well over the
years. I’ve handled you, held you in my arms, even made a parody of love to you on ice, but I’ve never felt you respond to me as a woman.
Respond
, Dany. Lord, I need that.” She could feel his heart thundering under the rough wool of his sweater as he drew her head to rest against it. “I want my hands on you,” he whispered into her hair. “Will you let me touch and learn you?”

Her heart jerked. “I don’t know.” It was all happening too swiftly. She felt as if she were drifting through a sensual dream. The warmth of the fire, the roughness of his sweater against her cheek, the scent of clean soap, the
feel
of him. How long had she wanted him to hold her like this and suppressed it into oblivion? It seemed as if it must have been a lifetime. Now he was here, not remote, not cold, wanting her. It was too much. “I think you’re right. I think I
am
afraid of you.”

“That’s why you should let me love you.” His hand was moving deftly in her hair, removing the pins that held her bun in place. “Then you’ll know there’s nothing to be afraid of. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.” Her auburn hair tumbled down her back in a shimmering cloud, and he
threaded his hands through it with lazy sensuality. “I’m not going to rush you. I know what pressures you’re going to be under for the next month, and there’s no way I’m going to ask you for a final commitment until you’re clear of that.” One hand was beneath her hair, massaging the coiled tension at her nape. “We’re just going to learn each other’s bodies.” His lips touched her temple. “You’re going to find out how much I want you and you’re going to want me too.” His teeth nibbled at her ear. “You’re going to sleep naked in my arms so that you’ll know you belong to me as I belong to you. And that there’s no possibility of either one of us belonging to anyone else from now on.”