Eve’s Wedding Knight

Chapter 12

Jake cleared his throat and searched his mind frantically for the thread of the conversation. What had they been talking about? Oh yes-his parents. And Pittsburgh.

“They like it there,” he said. She was dabbing self consciously at her lips now. He averted his eyes like a polite stranger. Staring down at the plate before him, he felt again that peculiar sensation of mouthwatering hunger he knew no amount of food would ever assuage. “Actually, you know, Pittsburgh is a very elder-friendly town. Plus, they’d lived there pretty much all their lives, except for a brief stint in the service before I was born. So when they retired-”

Eve interrupted with a small, interested sound. “So, you grew up in Pittsburgh?”

His mouth full, Jake nodded. “Yeah, I did. My dad was a cop, the first in his family to escape the mines and the mills.”

“Really? No kidding? My pop was a cop, too!”

“Yeah?” He didn’t tell her he was already privy to that information, as well as quite a few other tidbits about her she’d probably rather he didn’t know.

Unable to nod, she bobbed eagerly. “Chief of police of Desert Palms, California. How ‘bout your mom?”

“Strictly a homemaker-like every other mom I knew.” He shrugged without looking up. “That’s the way it was then. I didn’t know anybody whose mother worked outside the home.”

“Yeah,” said Eve, “me, too.” She paused, and when he glanced at her he saw that she was looking into space, smiling and remembering. “It seemed like she was always busy, though. And I don’t mean housework. She was into so many things-our schools, community organizations, charities and churches-I don’t know what all. And when she was home, she was always into something-gardening, redecorating, remodeling, you name it. Didn’t leave much time for us kids. And since Pop’s job had him gone most of the time, we were on our own most of the time. I guess that’s why we were so close…” Her voice trailed off. Jake, glancing up, just caught her fleeting look of wistfulness.

He said gruffly, “My dad was gone most of the time, too, but to tell you the truth, I didn’t really notice. It was sort of like…that was the way things were supposed to be. You know what I mean? A clear division of labor and responsibility. I think my mom must have raised us to expect it My sister and I always just took it for granted that Dad was working out there, and Mom was here, with us. I never once heard my mom ask anything more, or utter a word of complaint. I took her for granted,” he muttered, staring at his plate.

But he was thinking, not of his mother, but of the woman he’d married, and how unhappy he’d made her. Thinking that his mother wasn’t the only person he’d taken for granted.

Eve picked up one of the bottles of beer and unscrewed the top, bringing him out of the mire of past regrets. She offered it to him, but he shook his head and gestured at his half-empty plate. “Maybe later. Don’t want to ruin a good thing.”

So she tipped the bottle to her own lips, and with the notion of taking people for granted fresh on his conscience, it occurred to him how awkward it must be for her, wearing that collar, to do a simple thing like that-tilt her head back and swallow. He motioned toward her with his head, and thinking that she wouldn’t even be able to do that much, said in a voice made gruff with guilt, “Why don’t you take that thing off? If somebody catches us together, we’re busted anyway. Might as well be comfortable while you can.”

She gave a funny little feline growl as she anchored the beer bottle between her crisscrossed legs, a sound that reminded him of the actress-he couldn’t think of her name now-who used to play Catwoman on the old Batman television series. He wondered if she had any idea how sexy it was, as she laughed softly and murmured, “You make it sound like an assignation.”

She lifted her hands to the straps that fastened the collar together. Already in the act of reaching out to help, Jake paused, then decided to ignore the warning bells and claxons of every pitch and tone that were sounding inside his head. She moved her hands out of the way, giving over the task to him. The fastenings were simple-why were his fingers so clumsy?

“Tell me, Jake,” she said softly, watching him across the narrow chasm between them, her eyes full of laughter and a strange, dark glow. “What does it take to make you laugh?”

He hesitated for a long time, vibrating like a high-tension wire and fighting to hang on to his self-control, before he replied solemnly, “You make me laugh.”

“Oh, yeah…” Her voice was husky. “I can see that.”

“I’m laughing on the inside,” he said, absolutely deadpan.

Mercifully, at that moment, the two halves of the collar separated in his hands. He eased them and himself gently away from her, leaned back and laid them aside.

But if he’d expected the retreat to a safer distance to ease the strain on his willpower, he was out of luck. If anything, the wider perspective only made things worse. He was struck, for example, by the naked vulnerability of her bared neck, like the stalk of some delicate Sower-a buttercup, maybe, or a wild primrose. He thought it seemed too fragile to support her head and the jaunty, childlike tousle of her straw-colored hair. Yet he knew there was nothing fragile about her body. He remembered the graceful arrangement of muscles in her back…the silky-firm resilience of her flesh beneath his fingertips…

“So,” she said on an exhalation that was both a celebration of freedom and a sigh of pleasure, raking supple fingers through her hair, “you don’t go home to your parents’ for Thanksgiving?”

“Haven’t for a while,” said Jake gloomily. He was staring down at the plate in his lap, thinking that he was rapidly losing interest in its contents. He heaved a small and, he hoped, inaudible sigh. “When I was married we did. My wife saw to that. Family was important to her-probably because she didn’t have any to speak of. Only child…parents were both dead.”

“So,” said Eve, as she had once before, “she only had you.”

He snorted, utterly without mirth. “Did she?”

“Stop that.” She shook her head and leaned toward him, forearms resting on her knees, both hands encircling the bottle of beer. In a tense voice, she said, “You’re not being fair.”

He said nothing, but waited in wary silence for her to explain. After a moment, not looking at him, she lifted the bottle and took a sip. Her movements were quick and jerky-almost, he would have said, angry. She swallowed, still looking past him, then muttered under her breath, “Or she wasn’t.”

“Oh?” he said very quietly, for it was a subject, and they were feelings, he seldom if ever allowed himself to touch upon. “How do you figure that?”

She made a hissing sound, impatient and angry. He could feel himself shoring up his defenses even before she drilled him with a look and fired. “Look-this guilt trip you’re on-didn’t it ever occur to you that your wife wasn’t being fair when she put the entire responsibility for her own fulfillment on to you?”

“That’s not-” he began, withdrawing behind his bulwarks.

“Any of my business…I know,” she finished for him in a gentler tone. “And you’re thinking I don’t exactly qualify as an expert on marriage and divorce. But I have been in a lot of relationships, and I’m a terrific observer of other people’s, and I do know that human beings are so complex, and their needs are so different, that it’s just not possible for one person to provide everything another person needs. A woman in the happiest of marriages still needs her girlfriends. Still needs challenges, goals, mental stimulation, spiritual nourishment. No man could possibly fill all those needs, even if he devoted all his time and energy to the job. It’s just not possible.”

“All his time and energy?” Jake said bitterly. “How about none? I was gone all the time. And when I was home, I was wrapped up in my work-especially the last few years. Are you saying I bear no responsibility for making my wife happy?”

“Of course not.” Eve gestured impatiently with the beer bottle. “Obviously you can’t mistreat or neglect somebody and expect them to be happy in spite of it. I don’t know how to explain. It’s…complicated.” She subsided, momentarily defeated, then drew breath and blurted out, “All I’m saying is, your wife needed to get a life. If she’d had one, maybe she’d have been able to share and understand yours.”

In the silence that followed her unpardonable outburst, Eve sipped beer and listened to the echoes of her own words. Get a life. I used to have a life, she thought, and was suddenly as lonely and wretched there with Jake in that cozy little space as she’d been out on the edge of the marshes, hearing the call of the wild geese at sunset. I want my life bock.

“I’m sorry.” She mumbled the words, not looking at Jake’s face. “I had no right to say that.” She tried for a lighter tone. “In my own defense, I think it’s because…I miss-”

Jake’s soft-gruff voice interrupted her. “You’ll get your life back-I promise you. You will.”

Her gaze snapped back to him, and his eyes were waiting for her, black and impenetrable, but at the same time familiar and somehow welcoming, like a well-known and wall-loved room in the dark. How had he known? she wondered. It was as if he’d heard her heart talking.

And when had that long, unsmiling face with that patrician nose and those melancholy eyes, the unruly hair and five-o‘ clock shadow, become so pleasing to her eyes? Gazing at him, she felt her heart twist inside her, and a terrible longing all but overwhelm her.

What would it be like, she suddenly wondered, to turn to him as he came to their bed late at night, to feel his arms around her as she snuggled close to him and whispered, “Guess what I saw today? The most amazing thing…” Or to walk with him through an autumn woods, on a day when the sky was the crystal blue of sapphires and the scent of wood smoke filled the air, and breezes swirled leaves like confetti. And finding herself too overcome by the sheer loveliness of it for words, to just look at him and reach for his hand… What would it be like? Would he understand? And would she ever have the chance to know?

“I wish…” she whispered, then stopped.

“What?” Jake prodded.

But she shook her head, smiling a little the way people must when they ache inside. Because she couldn’t tell him what she’d just at that moment realized, which was that getting her own life back wasn’t going to be enough. That it was never going to be enough for her again. Because she wanted Jake’s life back, too.

Oh, it was complicated. He had such issues! She wanted him free and unencumbered. Unencumbered by guilt over the failure of his marriage, free to love again. Unencumbered by his quest to bring Sonny Cisneros to justice, free… to love her.

“Come on, tell me what you wish,” Jake urged her, and again his eyes seemed to darken and glow. As if he already knew.

“No-it’s nothing.” But her breath caught and a terrible fear seized her. What if it never happened? What if he never did manage to shake off his emotional baggage? What if she never got a chance to find out if he was the one-the right one-for her? Or…what if she found out he was, but that he didn’t feel the same? That would be the very worst thing, she thought. Far, far worse than never finding the person you were meant to share your life with-to find that person, and after waiting and searching for so long, to have it be only on one side.

“Waskowitz-” he was regarding her with a teasing glint in his eyes “-I’d never have thought you’d be one to mince words.”

“I’m not,” she said stubbornly, grabbing a sip of beer more out of a need for distraction than thirst. “But I’m not going to tell you this. It’s too-” she waved the bottle “-complicated.”

“And I’d never have taken you for a coward.”

Coward. Her eyes jerked back to him, collided with his with a jolt she felt clear through to her soul. No, she’d never been a coward. Afraid, yes. Terrified out of her wits. And always, the more frightened she was, the more determined and reckless she became, just to prove to herself that she was brave.

So now, when she looked into Jake’s eyes and they stared back at her, gleaming with challenge, in the face of that, and her own fear, what else could she do? She leaned across her folded legs and his drawn-up knee and the plate full of the remains of Thanksgiving dinner, and kissed him.

In her lifetime she’d ridden camels, shot rapids, jumped out of airplanes, plunged in a submersible to the bottom of an inky sea. But this… this was surely the bravest and most reckless thing she had ever done. Her heart leapt into her throat and stayed there; her hands felt frozen, her breath came in shivery sips, or not at all. She heard a rushing in her head as if she were in freefall, and the wind whistling past her ears as she plummeted down… down…down toward a distant unseen earth.

Not that he didn’t give her plenty of help; she knew she’d never have survived the humiliation if he hadn’t. With all the time in the world to see what was coming, he must have leaned toward her, met her halfway; she never knew for certain. But there was his mouth, sooner than expected… vibrant and warm.

Her breath caught; trembling, she swayed slightly, breaking the contact for a moment. He altered the angle of his mouth and found hers again. And this time he leaned into the kiss with deepening pressure, and his lips opened under hers. Startled, she retreated just a little. There was time for one quick breath before her body rocked forward again almost of its own volition, seemingly governed by hungers beyond her control. Her lips parted, their mouths met, and this time clung… melded… merged. As if it had always been intended that they should.

Except for the pounding of her heart, her world went still and silent. As if at that moment she had entered a place of perfect peace and safety…after a long and difficult journey, at last found her harbor, her home.

She would have wished for such a moment never to end, but of course it had to end, and did. Jake pulled away from her and the world rushed in on a wave of sound and sensation, leaving her shocked and reeling, conscious of the ache in her throat, the burn of tears behind her eyelids. She opened her mouth, searching for words, and when she couldn’t find them, pressed her fingertips to her lips in mute apology, though he wasn’t even looking at her. She supposed she should be glad of that.

Then she realized what he was doing. Realized that he’d taken the beer bottle from her nerveless fingers and the plate from his lap and swiveled around to place them on the shelf that ran across the side of the sleeping compartment behind him. That he was gathering up the silverware and napkin, the pie and the rolls and placing them on the shelf, as well. And that the shelf formed the head of the bed they were sitting on. And that they were sitting on a bed.

What had she been thinking of, to suggest as a meeting place, of all places…a bed?

With the decks cleared, Jake turned back to her, his face grave and eyes as dark and opaque as molasses. Wordlessly he reached out, and with his thumb, touched the faint scar on the bridge of her nose that was all that remained of her facial injuries. She closed her eyes as she felt his fingers fan over her cheek and temple and burrow into her hair. He had big hands, powerful hands, with long, strong fingers. Hands that had been trained to kill-perhaps had killed. But oh, how gentle they were… She remembered how he’d touched her, how skillfully he’d massaged her neck and how gently, when moments before he’d been mercilessly pounding a leather dummy with his fists.

She heard a sound, an inarticulate murmur. Opening her eyes, she saw Jake’s searching hers, bright with unspoken questions. Not knowing what to say to him, instead she put her hand over his and guiding the palm to her mouth, pressed her lips into it. As silent as she, he lifted his other hand to touch her cheek and finger the short tendrils of hair past her ear, and she covered that hand, too, and held it cradled against her head. It was a strange and unbearably tender embrace.

So tender, she could only stand it for a few moments. Then the swelling ache inside her became shudders, a gust of released breath…and in that instant before it could become a sob, he swooped down, caught her open mouth and pulled her to him. And in so doing, it seemed, let go the leash…opened the floodgates. He kissed her with a hunger so intense, it shocked her. It robbed her of her breath, all thought, reason and will.

In the beginning, she’d only meant to kiss him-she’d have sworn it. But now it seemed to her that there’d never been a question where that first kiss would lead. Now she knew that she wanted him-had been wanting him-and that was all that mattered. Wanted him so desperately, she wondered how she’d ever survived so long without him. Wanted him-needed him-as much as she needed her heart to keep beating, and her lungs to draw their next breath. To her it was as simple, fundamental and inevitable as that.

They came together and surged upward like two waves, two irresistible forces meeting, and kneeling upright, mouths hungrily exploring, tore frantically at each other’s clothes. Eve’s coat was easiest, and went first, followed immediately by her short, button-front cotton knit top. Jake’s casual plaid shirt and pullover sweater-probably chosen because he’d hoped they’d be less conspicuous in that rural neighborhood on a Thanksgiving Day than his customary FBI uniform of suit, white shirt and tie, not knowing they made him look like a walking ad for L.L. Bean-proved more difficult, if only because neither of them wanted to let go of the other or stop kissing long enough to pull it over his head. Somehow, though, they managed to divest him not only of his clothes, but of his inevitable agent’s accessories. His gun and its holster, his beeper and badge went on the shelf beside the abandoned dinner plate.

Then it was just Jake in his undershirt and Eve in her bra, and that quickly those barriers, too, were disposed of.

Kneeling face-to-face, both naked to the waist, they paused…but only for a moment. It wasn’t a time for lingering explorations, for feasting the eyes, for stimulating the senses. Those senses had been stimulated quite enough as it was.

Eve felt sick with desire-dizzy and light-headed. When Jake reached for her and dragged her to him, she whimpered. His body was a furnace; she clung to him desperately, straining to get closer, dug her fingers into the muscles of his back, raked his shoulders with her teeth. He did the same, trying, it seemed, to touch every part of her at once. Forgetting to be gentle, but who cared? And there were no words. The only sounds they made were gasps and pants and whimpers of pleasure.

As if he’d reached the limits of his endurance, he suddenly captured her head between his hands, held it still while he first gazed with smoldering intensity into her eyes, then swooped down like a raider and took her mouth and plundered it without mercy, until she tore away from him sobbing, and cried out in panic and fear-not of him, but for her own sanity.

She couldn’t fight this. Instinctively she knew that her only relief lay in surrender. With eyes closed she tipped her head back and gave herself up to the waves of desire. Rocked on the rhythms of her own body, utterly lost, like one cast adrift on a stormy sea, she trusted him to be her anchor. Weightless, she had no grounding, no point of reference save for the burning heat of his mouth. And it was everywhere-a searing brand on her throat, a pounding pressure where her pulses leapt and jumped beneath the skin…gently laving the soft hollows of her neck, then fiercely raking the taut and quivering cords. It was an overwhelmingly sensual and exquisite torture. She felt it in every part of her, every corner of her being.

“Please…” she whimpered, not knowing how to articulate what it was she wanted. Just… “Please…Jake…”

While his hands held her hips pressed tightly against his body so that she felt its heat and hardness, its rocklike strength and powerful desire, his mouth continued its journey of conquest, as inevitable and devastating an assault on her senses as a wildfire. His lips whispered over her breasts like promises. His teeth raked a rigid nipple, his tongue bathed it with cooling moisture. His mouth encircled it, drew it deep into a melting, tugging warmth, and she thought she would explode, break apart in his hands… shatter into a million tiny pieces.

Her hands found his belt buckle, the waistband of his trousers. And as if it was the signal he’d been waiting for, his found hers, as well. She felt the scrape of fabric on sensitized nerve endings, the cool kiss of air, and then the warm embrace of his hands…and pleasure so intense, she wept. With his head cradled against her breasts, she buried her hands and her face in the thicket of his hair, and the sobs rippled through her like seismic waves.

He whispered something she couldn’t quite hear, and his arms came around her, encircling her in comforting warmth and reassuring strength. She pressed her face into the hollow of his neck and shoulder, reveling in the rasp of his beard on her cheeks, tasting the saltiness of his skin, drinking in the familiar spicy smell of him-oh yes, she remembered that smell. Had she known even then, somewhere deep inside, what it would come to mean to her? Now it seemed as if she had always known, as if she’d been born with his scent programmed into her genes.

Dimly she felt him drag her legs across his lap and shuck away her jeans and panties. She gave him no help. She was far beyond that. And then he laid her down, oh, so gently, and moments later followed her, having sloughed away his clothing like an old skin. She opened her arms to him with a welcoming chuckle and felt his body slide over hers…smooth and warm and silky hard. Ecstasy settled over her like a gossamer blanket woven of star bursts and sunbeams.

Nowhere in her consciousness was there even a glimmer of doubt, or the faintest echo of suggestion that there might be things she should attend to, reasons why she ought not to be doing this-here, at least, and now. Her world, her existence was Jake. His arms were her foundation, his body her fortress, his face her sun, moon and stars. He was the air she breathed; his heartbeat was her heartbeat; his mouth was her nourishment. When she closed her eyes she felt as if she’d ceased to exist as a separate entity entirely; she existed only as part of him.

So when he pulled away from her and, kneeling between her parted legs, began to blaze a new trail of kisses and love bites over her body, she cried out and clutched at him in panic, writhing and whimpering in inarticulate protest.

And with a low growl of understanding-as incapable of words as she-he straightened, and stroking and gentling her with his hands, reached under her thighs and drew them even farther apart…positioned himself and then at last, with excruciating care and quivering self-restraint, drove himself home.

Breath rushed from her lungs in a gasp of shock, relief and pleasure. She arched her back and opened to him in delighted welcome, half lifting her body to meet him. He scooped his arms under her and raised her to him so that she found herself again more upright than reclining, sitting astride his thighs and clinging to him in joyous abandon. The strength in his body both awed and exhilarated her, she felt the trembling of self-control deep within his muscles and from somewhere found the words, and the sanity, to whisper, “It’s okay…it’s okay.”

Then it was he who gasped, and with one hand supporting her head and the other pressing her lower body hard against him, took her mouth and plunged his tongue deep, while at the same time he surged into her with all power and passion unleashed.

She lost all sense of time and space. She knew only wave after wave of unimaginable pleasure alternating with mindless panic…tension that seemed to build and build, higher and higher until she wanted to scream with it. And finally… the deliciously terrifying, heart-stopping plunge from the highest point of the roller coaster, a cry torn from the depths of her soul, the absolute certainty that she could not survive this…

And then the trembling, pulsating quiet. The wondering joy at finding herself alive. The overwhelming sense of awe, humility, and…love? Oh, yes! That’s surely what it was. Love…

She was laughing, shaking with laughter while tears ran down from the corners of her eyes and into her hair. And Jake was kissing her mouth, her wet cheeks, her eyes, framing her face with his hands and rubbing the tears away with his thumbs. She could feel his body shaking. Staring up into his face, she blinked away the tear shimmer…and suddenly her heart was swelling, bursting inside her. She lifted her hands and touched his face, holding it as if it were something rare and wondrous-as indeed it was.

“Well,” she said in a voice soft with laughter and awe, “I guess I know now what it takes to make you laugh…”