Never Trust A Lady

Chapter 15

“You okay?” Hawk asked as he waited for her to come around the car. She was moving slowly, he noticed, and wondered if she felt as shaky as he did, or if, perhaps, now that he’d given her breathing room, she was having second thoughts.

She shook her head and gave him a look that implied he’d said something incredibly stupid, but smiled a little, too, as if she’d already forgiven him for it.

Okay? Are you crazy? She wasn’t even sure her legs would carry her as far as the house.

She thought it would have been so much easier if they could have just stayed where they were. Or if, at least, he would sweep her up in his arms and charge boldly into the bedroom, like Rhett Butler carrying Scarlett up those stairs. The good old caveman fantasy-let him take the responsibility, and the decision out of her hands!

“Can you walk?”

She met his familiar black scowl with gently arched eyebrows and murmured. “I think so. Can you?”

He chuckled and reached for her hand, lifting it to his lips in an impulse that seemed both out of character, and at the same time oddly familiar. For some reason, maybe because of that, Jane felt as if her heart had jumped into her throat; she actually felt it would stop her breath.

It’s what I want, she thought, fighting panic. I’ve made my choice. I won’t regret it.

But still…it would have been so much easier if they could have stayed in the car like teenagers and let passion govern, and not have to think about it at all.

The kitchen was warm and light, and smelled of soup and, faintly, of cigarettes. Jane closed the door and made straight for the stove, picking up a spoon from the countertop with one hand and at the same time reaching efficiently for the burner knob with the other.

Hawk stood with his jacket draped over one shoulder, hooked on a finger, and watched her.

“What are you doing?” he asked after a moment.

Breathlessly, not looking at him, she said, “It just needs warming a little…it’ll only take a minute…”

Unnamed emotions, treacherous as rapids, tumbled inside him. “Jane, for God’s sake, turn off the stove.”

“I thought you were hungry.”

“Yeah, I am,” he growled, “but sure as hell not for soup.”

She had her back to him, her hands resting on the edge of the counter. He had a feeling if she lifted them from that support, they would tremble. He took a step closer to her and said softly, “Jane, look at me.” She lifted her head and gave him her profile, but didn’t turn. He raised a hand and almost-not quite-touched her. “Come on…please.”

And then she did finally face him, leaning against the counter with her arms folded across her middle. He noticed that she was still gripping the soup ladle, as if it were a weapon she might brandish in her defense, if necessary.

His voice was gruff when he said, “You can still call this off, you know. Now you’ve had a chance to think about it, if you’ve had second thoughts…”

“No,” she said softly. “It’s what I want.” But her eyes looked scared.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“After what-”

“Tom.” And now something-could it have been anger?- crossed her face like daytime lightning, barely discernible except as a flicker in the corner of an eye. But instead of thunder, her voice was a sultry rumble, humid and tense as a hot summer afternoon.

“Everything I told you was true. Including the part about it having been five years-more than five-since I’ve been with a man. If I’d never met you, if you hadn’t kissed me, if you hadn’t come here tonight, I’d have gone right on doing without one, and-” her voice rose slightly, a little lift of belligerence that touched him “-very nicely, too, believe me.” She paused, then said quietly, “But…I did, and you did, and here we are…and, I’d like you to stay.”

Again something darkened briefly in her eyes, but this time he had no trouble identifying it as uncertainty, and she added belatedly, over a choked little swallow, “If you want to.”

He frowned and muttered, “You know I do.” He felt wired and itchy, as if heat lightning crawled just beneath his skin.

Her eyes met and held his across the well-lit distance between them, and it seemed as though the lightning that was in both of them arced the chasm, as well, met and joined in a charge of electricity that was almost visible.

“Then,” she said, “I’d ask of you no more than that. And as for your…scruples-” her mouth tugged sideways in a smile as wry as his own “-you told me you’d been with other women since your wife died. Women you didn’t love. What’s one more? It’s just sex, Tom.”

He couldn’t account for the spasm of pain that sliced through him, and something he could have sworn was disappointment. But he growled. “Dammit, Jane, this is different.”

“Is it?” she said gently. “How?”

He couldn’t for the life of him think how to answer her. He only knew it was different. It was the reasons why, the possibilities, that terrified him. And the fear kept him silent.

After a moment, she went on in that same gentle tone, “We’re both adults, Tom. And we’ve been adults long enough to have collected quite a bit of emotional baggage. Things are a lot more complicated now than they were when we were kids.” Her smile flickered and went out. “It’s occurred to me that maybe I’m the one who’s asking too much, to think there could even be such a thing as love-I mean, you know, falling in love-for people our age.”

“Dammit, Carlysle-” He stopped midsentence. He wasn’t sure why it had occurred to him to refute what she’d said; a week ago, if you’d asked him, he’d probably have agreed with her. Hell, he supposed he still did. Sure he did. One to a customer, and he’d already had his.

Frustrated and off balance, he tossed his jacket in the general direction of a chair. It slid to the floor, landing with a faint clunk.

Guilt jolted him. But Jane didn’t seem to have noticed, and he had more pressing things to think about just then. It wasn’t that he’d forgotten why he was there in the first place, or the importance of the game he was in, or what was at stake. But it wasn’t his game anymore, it was the FBI’s, and they had all bases covered. In a matter of hours, Jarek Singh’s key and Loizeau’s killer would both be in custody, and all that would be left for Hawk to do was paperwork.

Even what had become his own personal stake-getting Jane cleared of any suspicion of complicity in the whole affair-had lost its sense of urgency. Being as certain of her innocence as he was that the sun would rise tomorrow, and just as certain that the shards in his jacket pocket would prove that beyond any doubt, he didn’t see that there was any particular rush to get the evidence back to the FBI labs. Tomorrow would do fine. Tonight was for…

What? Suddenly he wasn’t sure exactly what he was really doing there, or what was going to happen. He just had a vague, jumpy idea it might be something important.

He knew what he wanted to do more than anything at that moment, which was haul Jane into his arms, touch her the way he’d been touching her out there in the car and kiss her until neither of them could stand. Sensing it wasn’t the best moment to do so, he took out his cigarettes instead.

He frowned as he lit one, thinking about what she’d just said about love, afraid that with the electricity still so intense and dangerous between them, if he touched her the way he wanted to right now he might appear to be saying things he didn’t mean, things he wasn’t ready to say. He told himself he had to be careful with this woman. He couldn’t risk misunderstandings. He told himself he’d been honest with her up to now-about his feelings, anyway-and he didn’t intend to start lying at this stage of the game.

It occurred to him that he wished she’d be as honest with him.

Suddenly frustrated beyond bearing, he stuck a cigarette between his lips and muttered furiously around it, “Sometimes I can’t figure you out, you know that?”

She gave a small, surprised laugh and leaned to snag the ashtray and move it closer to him, an automatic gesture of consideration and courtesy, and so completely typical of her. “I know women who’d take that as a compliment,” she said lightly, then frowned. “I don’t know why. I’ve always wanted more than anything to be understood.”

He snatched the ashtray from her and stubbed out his barely touched cigarette, then pushed it away, took her by the shoulders and pulled her closer, but not yet into his arms. Caught by surprise, she put her hands on his chest, the fingers of one still curled around the handle of the soup spoon. He could see her mouth pop open as she stared at it, and he felt her body vibrate with deep-down-inside tremors.

He removed the spoon from her fingers and tossed it into the sink, wincing at the clatter. Then, cupping her jaw and chin with one hand, he tilted her face upward. “Look at me,” he commanded. She did, trustingly, lifting those sea-gray eyes to his. And he felt as if the ocean were rising up to meet him.

“I always know what you’re feeling,” he said, wondering why his tongue felt thick. He felt woozy…dizzy, as if riding a heavy swell-and he’d never been one to get seasick. “Your eyes tell me. They show everything. Did you know that?”

He watched a little pleat of lines appear between her eyebrows, and felt her pulse hammer against his palm. His pulse was in his throat.

“I don’t know-sometimes you seem so damn frank and open it scares me. Hell, I never know what’s going to come out of your mouth. And then sometimes, I look in your eyes and what I’m seeing doesn’t match what I’m hearing.” He paused, staring down at her as if he might see inside her soul if he only looked hard enough. It was like trying to see the bottom of the ocean. “I can’t tell what you’re thinking, dammit!”

Dear God, thought Jane as a new and heretofore unknown kind of fear shivered and sparkled like crystal dust just beneath her skin. This man has known me for a matter of days, and already he knows what David never could figure out in more than twenty-one years.

Was this what it would be like? Intimacy? To be one of a couple, wholly and completely with someone…did that mean she’d have to learn to share her innermost thoughts? Oh, surely not all her thoughts. But at least, not to lie about her feelings? Her true feelings…

Oh, what a terrifying thing! Imagine having the courage to let someone know when you felt angry, or hurt, or disappointed, or just plain out-of-sorts. Imagine trusting someone enough to let yourself be cranky and disagreeable and moody in his presence, trusting that he would still love you in spite of it. Imagine not having to be nice all the time. Imagine being allowed to have flaws. Imagine not having to be perfect in order to be loved. Imagine…

A tear appalled her by slipping from the corner of one eye and rolling down to puddle in the crack between her cheek and Tom’s fingers.

“Don’t!” he cried sharply, and smeared the moisture across her hot cheek with his fingers as if trying to make it disappear.

“Sorry,” she murmured, dropping her lashes across the other tears that wanted to follow the first. “It’s just, you know, emotions…”

The growl he gave had more frustration in it than lust, but his lips, when they touched hers, were unexpectedly gentle. Incredibly sweet. Unbelievably wonderful. A sigh shivered through her as for a moment-just a moment-she seemed to hang suspended in a fragile, crystalline bubble of happiness, happiness so pure and rare it felt like shimmers inside her, and ran along her skin like the cold-hot prickle of a sparkler’s shower on the Fourth of July.

If this is all there is to be, she thought-and for that moment believed-then I will settle for this. And be happy.

Her hands crept around his neck and her head relaxed into the cradle of his hand, and she sighed as though she’d found something for which she’d been searching a very long time. As she had.

“You must know what I’m thinking now,” she whispered when his lips left hers to travel upward across her cheek, tasting the dampness her tear had left there.

“I know what you’re feeling,” he corrected, murmuring the words across her eyelid like the tiniest of caresses. “That’s all.”

Drunkenly she mumbled. “Right now it’s the same thing anyway… I can’t think.” And she wished-oh, how she wished-that it were true.

She never knew how they got from the kitchen to her bedroom; certainly Tom didn’t sweep her into his arms. Rhett Butler-like, and carry her-she’d have been mortified if he had-but she had no recollection of walking down a darkened hallway, no awareness of sidestepping the living-room furniture or squeezing entwined through doorways. It was only when Tom turned on the light in her bedroom that the deep, enveloping fog of desire lifted long enough for her to make an inarticulate sound of protest. He instantly turned it off again.

On wobbly legs she moved through the semidarkness to the bed, tossed pillows onto the floor and folded back the comforter. Separated from him, she felt cold, isolated, off balance, as if she’d stepped onto the deck of a ship in a storm. When she felt his hands on her waist and the warm and solid bulkhead of his body there behind her, her relief was so profound she almost whimpered.

“Easy,” Hawk murmured as he turned her, wondering why she was shivering when it wasn’t cold in the room.

He was glad of that; he wanted very much to see her while he made love to her, and was glad not to have to resort to huddling under the covers like Puritans. To that end, he kissed her until he felt her relax and her shivers subside and her knees begin to buckle, then leaned over to turn on the lamp beside the bed.

And as before when he did that, she uttered a little yelp of protest. Only this time, he ignored it, left the light on and went back to doing what he’d been doing so pleasurably before.

“Have a heart,” she whispered, clutching his shoulders and laughing weakly as he reached under her tunic to stroke the sides of her waist.

“Come on,” he teased, pulling her torso against his and at the same time bending her backward a little, nibbling the side of her neck, delighting at the way her body moved in his hands, the way her muscles flexed and tightened, supple as a green willow. “You don’t mean to tell me you’re embarrassed…” Her shaky little half laugh confirmed it. Still not believing she was serious, he pulled back and looked at her, smiling himself, expecting to see a teasing light in her eyes. “Carlysle?”

But she wouldn’t let him see her eyes, and he wondered if it was because of what he’d told her, that he could read her feelings in them.

“Well, of course I am,” she murmured, sounding a little testy, licking her lips as if she could taste him still. “I told you, it’s been more than five years…and before that there was only…” She paused, drew a breath and blurted out, “You’re only the second man who’s ever seen this body, not counting obstetricians, and, well…”

That tenderness that surprised him every now and then, and that unnerved him so whenever it appeared, was lurking about again, playing a little goblin-game with his emotions. He fought it, keeping his frown in place as he said solemnly, in the best John Wayne imitation he could muster, “Well, ma’am, from what I’ve been able to see of it, it looks like a damn fine body to me.”

She made a disparaging sound, half snort, half whimper. “It’s forty-five years old, and looks every year of it.”

God help me, he thought, suddenly remembering what she’d said to him about people collecting baggage, and about nothing being as simple now as it was when they were young. Nothing about this woman was simple, that was for sure, and neither was the way he felt about her. Where in the hell was good ol’ lust when he needed it?

You’ve been with other women, she’d said-what’s one more? But he’d never felt like this, not under these circumstances, anyway. He felt protective, strong, but a little bit awed and humble, too, as if he was taking part in something…special. Out-of-the-ordinary. And there was that word again: Important.

Even the first time with Jenny hadn’t felt like this-but he’d been a virgin then, himself, and Jen, well, Jen had always been so sure of herself, so sure of him. In some strange way, he thought, Jane seemed younger now than Jenny had then.

He felt her shudder when he began, slowly, to lift her tunic, but she didn’t stop him, and he pulled it over her head and let it drop to the floor. Her hands fluttered nervously to the center clasp of her bra, but he gently pushed them aside and put his there instead. And then, instead of unhooking it immediately, he leaned down and kissed her a long, slow time, until her breathing grew uneven and she had to reach for him to keep from falling.

And still he didn’t free her breasts from that last bastion of modesty and protection, but began to rub the nipples through the lacy fabric that covered them, until he could feel them grow hard and tender, and chafe against that restriction. Until her breaths became tiny pants and whimpers that he took from her lips like sips of warm brandy.

He knew she would have torn off the rest of her clothes then herself, if he’d let her. But now, perversely, he denied her, holding her captive with his mouth and hands, and when she finally tore her mouth free and clung to him, incoherently gasping, instead of undressing, he began to talk to her. Blowing the words past the sensitive channels of her ear so that every nerve ending shivered to attention, he began to tell her about how he’d spent most of his adult life in Europe, where people have different attitudes toward women and age.

“Someone told me once…” Someone… He didn’t tell her just then about Ava, the mistress of a notorious drug kingpin with whom he’d had a brief but mutually profitable liaison, and who, last he’d heard, was enjoying a comfortable retirement in Morocco while the kingpin was serving a life sentence in a Gibraltar prison. But he knew he would…someday. Someday. And that, in itself, was a revelation.

For now, though, he told her what Ava had said to him once, on a warm summer day in Tuscany. “A woman’s body is a receptacle, caro mio…in which she collects life’s pleasures and experiences. And the more she collects, the more of life she experiences, the more she is able to give and receive pleasure…”

“In other words,” Jane gasped. “I’m not getting older, I’m getting better?”

“You got it.” He heard her breath catch as he finally released the catch on her bra. Slowly, he drew the halves apart, pushed the straps over her shoulders and down, until the thing fell of its own accord. Then he didn’t say a word, just looked at her, watching her face until he saw her lips soften in a smile…sleepy, seductive and wholly female.

“What are you waiting for?” she said huskily, licking her lips. “This receptacle has got some catching up to do.”

He laughed then, and he’d never known laughter to feel so good.

She’d wanted to make him smile, she remembered, the first time she’d ever set eyes on him. But she hadn’t known it would feel like this to look at him, full to bursting with wonder, joy and fear. Stunned, she lifted a hand to touch his lips with just the tips of her fingers, awed by the firm satiny warmth of them, hardly able to believe those same lips still bore the glaze of moisture from her own mouth, and that she could still taste him on her own tongue.

It was with a sense of shock that she realized she’d felt this same confusing mix of happiness and terror twice before, when she’d first gazed upon the faces of her newborn daughters, first tremulously touched the velvety fuzz on their heads with an awestruck finger. Love. No gentle emotion, this. No hearts-and-flowers and giddy birds tying ribbons into lovers’ knots. This was something fierce and frightening, powerful and ungovernable. Not a choice at all, but a force of nature.

“Tom,” she cried, “I-” But she stopped herself in time, and didn’t say it out loud.

Instead, she gulped and said, “Hey, when do I get to see your-” And stopped again.

“-My forty-five-year-old body?” he finished for her with such gallantry her heart, if it hadn’t already, melted completely. Grinning, he held out his arms. “Feel free…”

Feel free. Oh, she wanted to, more than anything. She wanted to feel, to experience, to relish and enjoy, to lose herself in almost forgotten sensations, languish in unimagined pleasure. But it was all so new, and that she hadn’t expected. Her mind was so busy discovering, sorting, comparing, questioning, wondering… She didn’t want to think at all, and instead she was overwhelmed with thoughts.

Have I ever done this before? she wondered as she lifted Tom’s sweater and helped him push it up and over his head, clumsily, so that he emerged tousled and grinning, like a mischievous boy. She couldn’t remember, and it didn’t seem likely she would have. Unwilling to relinquish even that much control, David had always preferred to undress himself. Should she tell Tom that? And would he believe her if she did?

He is beautiful. she thought as she tugged his soft white T-shirt free of his trousers and skimmed it upward, running her hands over the almost geometric symmetry of his abdominal muscles, brushing the tickly thicket of chest hair with her arms and biting her lips to keep from following her impulse to bury her face in it. Beautiful…just as I imagined he’d be. Should she tell him so? Would she sound like a silly, besotted girl if she did?

And all the while, he was cradling the weight of her breasts in his hands, teasing and tormenting the nipples with his fingers until they hardened to the point of hutting-a good hurt, a delicious hurt, a tugging she could feel deep down inside-and all she wanted to do was close her eyes and sink into that glorious sensation and forget everything in the world but his hands…his mouth…his body.

This is worse than being a virgin, she thought, swaying drunkenly into his hands, trying not to moan at his touch. I should be better at this…I have no excuses for being so scared.

“Hey, look at me,” Tom said in his familiar gravelly murmur, his breath pouring like liquid sunlight over her eyelids. She tried, but her eyes wouldn’t focus, and she saw him only in a shimmering blur. From inside it his voice came, softer than she’d ever heard it, soft as the voices of bees on lazy summer afternoons. “You are beautiful, but that’s not the reason I wanted the light on. The part of you I really want to see is your eyes…”

She felt his hands moving, fanning down her rib cage to the sensitive sides of her waist She sucked in air when his fingers feathered across her belly, dipped under the elastic waistband of her leggings and eased them gently over her hips. With his hands firmly cupping her bottom, he paused and murmured, “Your turn…”

She struggled with his belt buckle, her fingers nerveless and stiff as wire. It parted more of its own accord, she thought, or some kind of miracle, perhaps, than from anything she’d done. But when she slipped her hands inside his waistband, his skin felt warm and smooth, like silk. She wanted desperately to kiss him there. Do I dare? she thought. Would it be too bold?

“Look at me,” he said more insistently now. “You look scared. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

It took a moment; her tongue felt wrapped in cotton wool. When she did try, her words kept getting caught in her breathing and bumping into her wildly pounding heartbeat, so they came out in broken gasps. “I keep…thinking I feel…like I’ve never…done this before.” She tried to laugh and failed miserably. “Silly…”

“But you haven’t,” he said. And neither have I. He kept trying to believe otherwise, that it was as she’d said, that she was no different than any of the other women-lovely women, each and every one-he’d been in lust with during the past seven years. He was trying his best to make it all about sex, but it kept getting away from him and turning into…something else. What. exactly, he didn’t know. What he did know was that all the women he’d made love to in his lifetime hadn’t prepared him for making love to this woman. Nothing had prepared him for Jane.

Prepared. The thought hit him like a bucket of cold water.

How, he wondered, silently cursing himself with all the virtuosity of half a lifetime’s international experience, could he have been so stupid? He felt as clumsy and ill-equipped as an adolescent boy.

“What?” The word was a warm, frightened puff against the base of his throat, and he realized that he’d gone stiff and still as a post, with his hands neatly cupping the part of her that had contributed most to his lustful fantasies, not to mention a couple of recent sleepless nights.

“Carlysle,” he groaned, “please tell me you’re on the Pill.”

“I’m not.” She pulled back a little, frowning. “I mean, there wasn’t…” He sighed, and slowly eased his hands away from her bottom. “Wait,” she gasped. “Don’t go ’way.” And before he could stop her, she’d slipped out of his arms and was darting across the bedroom, forgetting to be self-conscious about the fact that she was wearing only a pair of formfitting leggings.

A diaphragm? he thought, bemused. Would such a thing still be functional after five years? But no, she was making, not for the bathroom across the way, but down the hall to one of the bedrooms he’d assumed belonged to her daughters. He heard a door open, then drawers scraping in and out.

A moment later she was back, looking embarrassed but triumphant as she came to him, all too aware now of her nakedness, but determined not to cower. He wondered if he could ever make her understand how sexy she looked to him. She was right, hers was a forty-five-year-old’s body, not a young girl’s, and all the more beautiful because of it…lush and ripe as the fruits of summer, or a velvety, full-blown rose.

“How’s this?” she said breathlessly as she dropped a foil packet onto the nightstand. She flushed and nervously pushed her hair back from her face, and didn’t look at him as she explained, “I got them…a while back. For Lynn. She’s on the Pill now, so I don’t think she’ll mind.”

“You bought condoms…for your daughter?” Hawk didn’t know why he felt so shocked; some sort of residual fatherhood instinct, he supposed.

Jane leveled a look at him and said in her quiet way, “She’s twenty-two and has a steady boyfriend. What would you have me do?”

He didn’t answer. But he was thinking again as he gently pulled her against him and felt her breasts nestle in his chest hair, about what she’d said about nothing being as simple as when they were young. He was wondering what his life might have been like if Jason had lived, and what kind of father he’d have been. Wondering how it was that he could think of Jason now and feel only a twinge of pain, and the bittersweet ache of regret.

Wondering if it might have something to do with the woman he held so closely in his arms that right now he could feel her heartbeat as his own.

They finished undressing each other quickly after that, and lay together side by side…almost, for that moment, at least, like old lovers. As if, Hawk thought, they’d both accepted that this time, the first time, there was just too much tension for languid explorations, too many nerves and inhibitions for prolonged and inventive foreplay.

And yet, when he reached for the foil packet, she leaned across him and placed her hand over his and whispered, “No…don’t. Not yet. I want to touch you first. You feel…so good.”

He didn’t say a word, just drew her down onto his chest and cradled her head in his hands, and gently wove his fingers through her warm, damp hair while she explored his body with her hands and her mouth and all the speechless wonder and curiosity of a child with a newfound treasure. He wondered later where he got the self-control to keep his hands so gentle and his body so still, when he felt as tight and tense as an overwound spring, and full to the point of pain. Her mouth, her tongue, her sweet, warm breath felt cool as rain on his fevered skin…

This feels so good…he feels so good, Jane thought. I’d forgotten. No-did I ever know? It was so different, not like anything she’d ever experienced before. Not like David with another name, but something completely new, completely wonderful. The way he gave himself up to her so completely, encouraging her so gently, never urging, never forcing, just…enjoying. Enjoying her.

And when he finally growled, “Enough…” and took back control from her, it didn’t seem like a taking at all, but more as if they were two pianists making music on the same keyboard, first one taking the melody, then the other, in beautifully synchronized rhythm. Or like a dance. Yes, she thought again as she had before, in the car. That was what it was like. The most glorious…incredible…beautiful dance.

He became her partner in the fullest sense of that word. He seemed tuned to her body’s rhythms, seemed to understand better than she did how she felt, what she needed, when to go slowly and when to pick up the tempo. And like the very best of partners, he telegraphed his every move, so that she never felt clumsy, or awkward, or shy. She felt graceful, beautiful and incredibly sexy. She felt earthy, and daring, and…free.