The beginning of the next day was inauspicious. Kathleen hadn’t slept well, and her cranky disposition didn’t improve when she arrived at breakfast to find Erik already there. He was smiling, teasing the children, flirting with the counselors and looking rested and exuberant.
Normally, she indulged in the homemade biscuits that were lighter than air and melted in the mouth, though she wasn’t a regular breakfast eater. This morning, the biscuits could have been chalk, which she chewed mechanically and washed down with lightly creamed coffee. The aroma of freshly grilled bacon and scrambled eggs wasn’t at all appetizing. It was as if overnight her whole world had gone sour. It was Erik Gudjonsen’s fault, and she resented him for it. She had resigned from her job to escape the unsolicited attention of a man with an inflated ego. She now thought David Ross an amateur compared with the videographer.
Only in the secret parts of her mind would she admit how his kiss had affected her. It had been quick, almost playful, but effective. When she felt the tip of his tongue against her lip2, a spear of pleasure had penetrated her breasts and pierced downward to her very center, leaving a wound like a hollow emptiness.
* * *
Kathleen admitted now, as she covertly watched him from beneath the screen of her black lashes, that she had played right into his hands. Everything she had done since meeting him had been a defensive reaction to his masculine forcefulness. Obviously it amused him to goad her.
Resolving not to let him provoke her, Kathleen made plans for the coming day. She was a capable, independent woman, and by the end of this day, he’d know it. As for her attitude toward him, she would treat him with cool politeness, professionalism, and meet his insinuating bantering with condescending tolerance.
Determinedly, she stood up, checked her wristwatch and then imperiously blew the whistle around her neck. “All of you in Group Four, meet outside on the steps. Pronto.” She was proud of the strong confidence in her voice, and carried her head high when she returned her tray to the large service window leading into the kitchen.
As she sailed out the door and strode toward her group, Erik turned to face her. He stood ramrod-straight and saluted briskly, making all the children laugh.
“Reporting for duty, Sergeant.”
Swallowing her vituperative comeback, she said graciously, “Have you got everything you need?”
“Yes, I’m ready,” he said solemnly.
That’s what you think, Kathleen thought to herself. “All right,” she said aloud. “Let’s go.”
She had a full schedule of exhausting activities. Hoping to put Mr. Gudjonsen in his place, she was disgruntled to find that he did everything well, indeed excelled in everything. He took to the steep, rocky trail up the mountain like a goat, and all the while carrying his camera on his shoulder, ready to use it at an instant’s notice. How could he do that? she asked herself in exasperation when they had reached the turnaround point of their nature hike. She collapsed on a grassy area to rest.
Meanwhile, Erik was taping the children as they uncapped their canteens and took great gulps of water, emptied gravel out of their sneakers or ventured off into the woods seeking new discoveries.
Kathleen’s eyes were closed as she leaned against a tree trunk. They flew open when she felt Erik’s large body plop down beside her.
“Whew!” He expelled his breath in a long sigh as he blotted his forehead with a handkerchief. “How do you do this every day?”
“You’re tired?” she asked with a trace of incredulity.
“Sure. Aren’t you? If I did this kind of thing all the time, I’d be dead within a week.”
He smiled and she answered with a soft laugh. Was that one small point on her side of the scoreboard?
After they had returned to the compound and eaten a hasty lunch, they traipsed to the archery grounds for target practice. The children pressed Erik to try his hand with the bow. His aim was far better than Kathleen’s, and the children clustered around him in awe as he repeatedly zinged the arrows into the heart of the targets. Then his ever-present camera was slung back onto his shoulder and he taped the children’s efforts as Kathleen coached them.
By the middle of the afternoon, she had put down some of her bitterness and afforded Erik a grudging respect. He never forgot his job. The camera was like an extension of his arm and he guarded it constantly. But his rapport with the children surprised her. He was patient, answered their multitudinous questions, joked, teased, admonished and placated with equal aptitude.
When she blew the whistle for swimming, they shouted excitedly and dashed for the river. As she ran to keep up with them, Kathleen glanced over her shoulder to see Erik walking back toward the compound. She shrugged off her faint disappointment and followed the campers to the river.
She had worn a bikini, though a conservative one, under her shorts and T-shirt. She stripped these off unselfconsciously and ventured out into the swift current. It didn’t take long for the children to include her in their horseplay, and soon she was struggling to keep her head above the water as they tried to dunk her.
Finally, laughing and shrieking, they heeded her pleas for mercy and released her. She came up out of the water, pushing the clinging hair off her face.
That was when she saw Erik standing on the shore, stripped down to swimming trunks but with his camera up to his eye and aimed directly at her. She hesitated, then smiled tentatively before turning away to commission the kids not to get too rambunctious.
She walked up the shoal and wrung the water out of her hair. “I thought you had called it quits for today,” she said unevenly, wishing he would look somewhere else besides at her body in the cinnamon-colored bikini.
He had secured his recorder and camera up on a high, dry, flat rock under a shade tree. The breath caught in her throat at the sight of his physique without the camouflage of clothing. The crinkly carpet of blond hair that matted his chest tapered to a silky line that disappeared into the low waistband of his blue trunks. His legs were muscular and tanned that same dark color as the rest of him and sprinkled with blond hair that showed up in sharp contrast.
“I had to get another tape and put on a swimsuit.”
“Are you going in?” she asked.
“Yes. I can’t resist. I nearly melted up there.” He indicated the steep hill that they had taken on their nature hike.
She sat on the bank while he went in the water. He played rough with the boys, more gently with the girls, but none were deprived of his attention. Even Jaimie, who had followed Erik around all day like a worshipful puppy, was included.
Kathleen had been combing through her hair with her fingers, and it was almost dry by the time Erik called “uncle” and came out of the water.
“If I stay here too long, I’m going to need more vitamins,” he said as he fell onto his back. The skin on his stomach stretched taut and formed a deep cavern beneath his ribs. His chest rose and fell with heavy breathing.
She laughed. “You don’t have any trouble keeping up.” Before she could rationalize her motivation, she confessed, “I was trying to trip you up today.”
He rolled over onto his side and looked up at her with his piercing blue eyes. She refused to meet them and stared at the splashing children.
“Why?” he asked softly. He wasn’t smiling.
Shaking her damp hair, she said, “I don’t know. Maybe I have an instinctive aversion to someone who follows people around with a camera as though trying to catch them in some compromising situation. I think I had you pegged as a cynic, looking for ulterior motives behind our program here. Mountain View is ecumenical and supported strictly by private donations. Edna and B. J. take very little out for their own salaries and work hard each fall and spring to book groups for sales meetings and such. The money they make off of that goes right back into the camp. They’ve assumed this summer camp for orphans as their personal mission, but they also leave themselves open for criticism. I guess I saw you as a modern-day witch-hunter.”
To her surprise, he laughed. “A few years ago, you would have been right.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. I was a cynic. I thought the world and everything in it stank. I knew all the answers to make it right, of course, but I wouldn’t share them with anyone. That would put me on the same low plane with all the other idiots who tried to rectify universal injustices.” He laughed bitterly at himself and sifted several small pebbles from one hand to the other.
“What made you so bitter toward the world?” Kathleen asked. “You see, I excused myself for feeling that way. My parents had been taken from me.”
“That’s the hell of it. I had no excuse. I think I acted that way out of immaturity and boredom more than anything else. I was a perfect example of the ‘me’ generation. If the whole world was bent on destruction, then I was determined to show it that I didn’t give a damn if it went to hell in a bucket. I would look out for Number One. Me.”
“What changed you? Not that I don’t think you’re still a smart-ass,” she qualified.
He laughed at her admission, but then grew serious. “I was sent to Ethiopia on assignment. I spent six months there. I went convinced that the whole world was ugly.”
“And you found even more ugliness?”
“No,” he said gently. “I found beauty.”
She shook her head in bafflement. “I don’t—”
“Let me explain. If I can. One day I was in a refugee camp. God, Kathleen, you can’t even imagine the deprivation, the misery. We have no concept of…” He made a helpless gesture with his hands. “There’s just no way to describe the devastation, the… the putrefaction.” He rubbed a hand over his eyes as if to wipe away the image.
“Anyway, I was shooting tape, and in my eyepiece, I saw a young mother with her baby. Both of them were well past critical as far as starvation levels go, emaciated, really. But unaware of my seeing her, the woman squeezed the last drop of milk out of her breast and put her nipple in the baby’s mouth. She wept. The infant reached up and touched her cheek. It was as though he knew that was all she had to give and was grateful for it.”
He became quiet, staring off into space. Even the sounds the campers were making seemed to be absorbed by his intensity.
“Amid all that ugliness, I saw something beautiful. I don’t mean to get too preachy, but I think I realized that there could be something good found in everything if you look hard enough. The world just might be worth saving after all, if only for the sake of one child.”
Kathleen was strangely moved by the story. “Your camera must find all sorts of nuances that the naked eye would miss. It doesn’t discriminate, does it? It isn’t closed by prejudgment.”
“Come here,” he said suddenly, grabbing her hand and hauling her to her feet.
“Where?” she asked. “The children—”
“No, no. We’re just going over here. Very few people are allowed this privilege. I hope you appreciate it.”
He steered her toward the boulder where his camera was. Hands on hips, he squinted his eyes at her appraisingly and then looked at the heavy camera. “Let’s see. How are you going to do this?” he muttered. “If I put that on your shoulder, you’ll sink into the ground.”
“What—”
“Here! I know.” He flipped several switches as she had seen him do last night, turning on the machine. “Okay, you move over here.” Placing a hand at her waist, he pulled her nearer until she was facing the rock and almost eye level with the camera.
“Now, stand up on tiptoe until you can fit your right eye against the eyepiece. Can you see the monitor in there?”
She did as she was told. It was hard to concentrate on anything after the contact his hand had made with her bare midriff. But her eyes found the tiny television monitor that was about an inch square.
“Is that what it looks like? It looks just like a black and white television. I thought it would be like looking into the lens of an ordinary camera,” she exclaimed.
“If you’re shooting film it is, but with videotape, you can see exactly how it’s going to look on a television screen, except for the color. That’s why you need a white balance.” He cleared his throat loudly and got an elbow in his ribs. “What do you see? Tell me which way to move it.”
“Well,” she hesitated. All she could see was a blurry image of the tree a few feet in front of them. “It’s out of focus,” she admitted.
“Say when,” he said close to her ear. “I’ll try to focus for you.”
She watched as the trunk of the tree gradually became clearer, until she could see the patterned detail of the bark. “When!” she cried excitedly.
“Now which way do you want to go? Left? Right? Up or down?”
“Up a little, more into the branches.” He took a half-step closer to adjust the camera and she felt his warm, hard chest against her back. His arm rested on her shoulder as he reached in front of her to maneuver the dials around the lens. Her heartbeat quickened.
“Now to the left,” she said breathlessly. “Keep going. Wait! Right there. There’s something… it’s a spider and… oh, the web is huge. It spreads from limb to limb. He’s so busy at work. Oh, Erik, can you move closer, I mean, make him bigger?”
He chuckled and she felt his breath stirring the hair at the back of her neck. “Sure. But I’ll have to roll focus again. Can you see him better now?”
“Yesss! There! Now focus again. Perfect. He’s perfect.”
“Would you like to record an afternoon in the life of a spider?”
“Aren’t we?”
“No, I have to press the record button.”
“Would you mind?”
“Of course not.”
Once they began recording, she expected him to return his left hand, but he didn’t. Instead, he laid it on the rock so that she was pressed between the hard, cool surface of the boulder and the warm vibrancy of his body. It would be hard to discern which was the stronger and more impregnable.
“How’s he doing?” he whispered in her ear. For a moment, she thought she felt the brush of his mustache against her lobe.
“Fine. He’s beautiful.” She could feel his knees against the backs of her thighs and unconsciously adjusted her legs to those muscular columns.
“Your hair smells like honeysuckle,” Erik murmured. This time, there was no mistaking that his lips were moving against her ear. His hips shifted and Kathleen realized that it was only the tight spandex of her bikini bottom and his cotton swim trunks that separated his virility from the soft curve of her buttocks.
“Erik,” she said hoarsely.
“Hmm?” His nose was investigating the area behind her ear.
“I think… I’ve… the spider… We’d better stop now.” She didn’t know for sure if she was talking about stopping the videotaping or the forced proximity of their bodies that was quickly becoming an embrace.
He sighed. “Okay.” He clicked off the camera and the tiny monitor in the eyepiece turned gray again. He stepped away from her, and when she felt it was safe, she composed her features and faced him. Unable as yet to meet his eyes, she spoke to the ground. “Thank you. It was wonderful.”
“Was it?” His voice was ragged but intuitive, demanding of her an honest answer. She lifted her eyes quickly, and was instantly impaled by the sharpness of his. Her green eyes were held mesmerized until his slid down her face and rested on her trembling lips. Then they moved up again to search the inner turbulence that shone from her eyes.
“Kathy. Kathy.”
The small, quiet voice finally penetrated the desire-clouded perimeter of her brain. She backed away from Erik and looked down distractedly at Jaimie.
“Kathy?” he asked uncertainly. “My feet are getting pruney.”
Kathleen clasped her hands to flaming cheeks and glanced hurriedly at her watch. “Oh, my God! It’s five-fifteen.”
Erik started laughing at her, but she ignored him and ran to the riverbank, reached for her whistle, which had been shed along with her clothes, and blew it loudly.
“Hurry, hurry, kids. We’re late. Get into your shoes and line up quickly.”
She finally gave attention to the small hand tapping on her arm and looked down to see Jaimie again. His dark eyes were shining and bright. “It was neat having Erik here today, wasn’t it, Kathy?”
Kathleen looked back toward the rock where Erik was hauling his camera onto his bare shoulder. “Yes,” she said shakily. “It was neat.”
* * *
Erik hurriedly ate his dinner and then began setting up the television monitor on which he could play back his videotapes. He had promised the campers they could see themselves on television and he was keeping the promise. Many of them skipped the meat and vegetables and went straight to the chocolate pudding, hoping to speed the meal along.
When Erik saw what was happening, he announced loudly, “Nobody gets to watch until everyone’s plate is clean.”
There was a congregational groan, but the food on each plate was then attacked with voracity. Within a half-hour, all two hundred children were fanned out in a semicircle before the dais.
“Okay. Here are the ground rules. The first boy who stands up and blocks someone’s view has to wrestle me. The first girl who does it has to kiss me.” The children shrieked with laughter as Erik scowled darkly. “I mean it. If all of you cooperate, everyone will get to see. Okay?”
“Okay!” they chorused.
He started the playback, and soon they were convulsed with laughter at their images on the screen.
“Isn’t he marvelous with the children?” Edna said glowingly. She, Kathleen and the other counselors were still seated at their dinner table, relaxing over cups of coffee or glasses of iced tea.
“He’s very competent,” Kathleen said.
“Oh, I know he is. He wouldn’t work for the network and have been assigned so many impressive jobs if he weren’t. But he could have had an artistic temperament and been cranky with everyone. He manages the children beautifully.”
Kathleen crossed her arms in a defensive gesture. She didn’t want Erik to be marvelous. She examined him for flaws. She wanted to see him make a mistake, commit a small transgression. His perfection disturbed her. His presence disturbed her. He disturbed her.
Ever since they had returned the children to the compound and gone to their separate cabins, her mind had been in a whirlwind. Much to her chagrin, she caught herself remembering how it felt to be close to him, something he had said into her ear, his warm, fragrant breath and how it caressed her cheek and the back of her neck.
Then, impatiently, she berated herself for acting like a fool. She was a mature woman, too old to be behaving this way. Too old to have that shortness of breath and fluttery heartbeat each time she reflected on the image of him as he had walked toward the river, his body naked except for the swath of cloth around his loins that enhanced rather than hindered his sexuality. Never had she given so much thought to the male anatomy.
She had resisted the temptation to wear something to dinner besides her navy shorts and white knit T-shirt. But she did succumb to the urge to dab Mitsouko onto the pulse points of her body. Not because of him, she had averred even as she leaned down to stroke some on the backsides of her knees.
Now, Edna’s enthusiasm for Erik only made her more determined not to become too attracted to him. He was a world-traveler. He was several years older than she. How old? Thirty? Thirty-five? Chronological age didn’t matter. Even if he were younger than she, he would still be years older in experience.
Surely he had known women in every part of the world. A man who looked like Erik would not stay celibate for long. His virility radiated from him like an aura of light that touched everyone, especially women. The only persuasion he would ever have to use would be to get women out of his bed once he was finished with them. To get them into it would be no problem.
Disobediently, her mind conjured up a picture of Erik lying on a wide bed. Someone was with him. It was she. She was helpless beneath him. He was nuzzling her neck with his mouth. His mustache—
What was she doing? Kathleen shook her head. Glancing around furtively, she noted that neither the Harrisons nor anyone else had been watching her strange behavior. They were all engrossed in the unedited tape that was being played through the monitor a second time at the request of the viewers.
No one noticed when Kathleen stood up and left the mess hall, shutting the screen door quietly behind her.
No one but Erik.
He watched Kathleen as she strolled to the edge of the deep porch and sat down on the top step, tilting her head back to gaze at the sky. He saw how the tendrils that had escaped the knot of hair secured to the top of her head lay like strands of silk against the stark whiteness of her shirt.
Closing his eyes briefly, he could almost smell the honeysuckle essence of her hair that had filled his head and made him drunk this afternoon.
It was hard to tear his eyes away from the poignant picture she made sitting out there in the shadows. For the sake of his captive audience, he returned his gaze to the tape. But not his mind. It was still on the girl on the porch.
Girl? Woman? That was the hell of it. For some reason, none of the labels he usually attached to women fit Kathleen Haley. She had elements of every other woman, yet she was none of them. She had a classiness, an indefinable distinction that made her different and impossible to categorize.
But she was woman. God! She was woman. Every time he saw her, his body threatened to make it embarrassingly evident how much of a woman he thought her to be.
That was another thing that didn’t fit into the scheme of things. She wasn’t his type. The Harrisons had told him she worked in the fashion industry. He should have guessed that right away. Who else could make a simple pair of shorts and a T-shirt look haute couture? It had never mattered a tinker’s dam to him what a woman wore. He preferred them without anything on. And then, he liked lush bodies, round hips, big breasts.
She was almost boyishly slender, but that tight little fanny nearly drove him crazy. He wanted to cup his hands over it, just to see if it was as firm and taut as it looked. Those long, slender legs didn’t try to be provocative, but he had caught himself watching the play of muscles as she walked ahead of him on the mountain trail earlier in the day. Her breasts were small, but full and beautifully shaped. When she had come out of the cold, rushing river, her nipples had stood out invitingly, eager and pert.
Dammit! He was fantasizing about a woman barely mature enough to be deemed such. He liked woman, but he liked them naked, silent and in bed. He never thought of them as people with careers. Never did he seek one out for the sake of an enlightening conversation. Yet today he had shared with Kathleen thoughts that he hadn’t even catalogued in his own mind. It was her rapt, intense listening that had opened up his own brain, making him see things clearly that had been nebulous before.
The kiss last night hadn’t been spontaneous. He had planned it right down to the last detail. He had wanted to match his mouth to hers. But rather than satisfying him, he now craved more than one kiss. He had to see if she tasted as good as that one brief appetizer had indicated she did.
The tape running through the machine clicked off, and Erik was thrust out of his pleasant surmises by the enthusiastic applause of the children.
“Again, again,” they chanted.
Erik laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“Children,” B. J. called over the roar, and clapped his hands. “Children, the night bell is about to ring, so let’s all start toward our cabins, please. Counselors, round up your groups. We’ve had a real treat tonight. Let’s all give Mr. Gudjonsen a big thank you.”
The words were screamed at him, the campers taking full advantage of being as loud as they wanted to be.
Kathleen had reentered the room when all the commotion started. Erik managed to wade through the throng toward her. “I’d like to show you the tapes I shot today. They’re not edited, but I thought you might like to see what I’ve got so far.”
“Well, I…” She hesitated. She didn’t know whether she wanted to be alone with him or not.
“Come on,” he urged. “Look at it as a free movie.” He cuffed her on the shoulder with a gentle fist.
She laughed. “All right.”
They said their goodnights to the other counselors and to the Harrisons, who hurried out of the building, declining Erik’s offer for them to stay, so B. J. could get back to their cabin before the ten o’clock news came on. The ladies who managed the kitchen had been cleaning up the dinner dishes while the tape was playing, so the building was now deserted.
“Let me load this first tape,” Erik said. “Why don’t you catch the lights? We can see it better.”
Kathleen moved to the large panel and flipped off the switches. Only the diffuse light from one small bulb in the kitchen illumined the room as she made her way back to the benches.
“Ready?” Erik asked over his shoulder, and smiled.
“Ready.”
He started the tape and Kathleen took a seat at one of the long dining tables. Erik sat down beside her, propping his elbows on the table behind him and stretching his long legs out in front of him. Kathleen looked down at her own bare leg, a scarce few inches from his thigh. She didn’t move farther away.
They watched the raw footage that he had shot and were soon chatting amiably about the moods he had captured. Kathleen couldn’t help but laugh when the camera rolled in on Gracie’s splotched, tear-streaked face. She had fallen down and scraped her knee on the morning hike, and had wailed disproportionately to the injury.
“Oh, Erik, how cruel,” Kathleen admonished, even though she was laughing.
He chuckled. “Maybe so. But I couldn’t resist. You know, one day, when she’s older, the braces come off and she can wear contact lenses, I’ll bet Gracie will put the rest of them in the shade.” His hand found its way to Kathleen’s shoulder.
“I hope so. She deserves some happiness. Her parents and little brother died in a car crash. She was hospitalized for months with injuries. She was eight at the time, and as sad as it is, that’s often considered too old for adoption. She’ll probably live at an orphanage until she’s eighteen when, hopefully, she can go to college.”
“God, what a bummer.”
Kathleen sighed. “Yes. Most of the children here were orphaned under similar circumstances. Some of them have one parent, usually a father who isn’t able to keep them with him. Very few were born in a home for unwed mothers or lost their parents in infancy. Most infants are easily adopted.” Just then, a close-up of Jaimie filled the small screen.
“Jaimie is the exception to that rule. His father never married his mother. She gave him up for adoption at birth. He was never placed because he’s biracial.”
Erik’s hand moved from her shoulder to her neck in a comforting gesture that changed into a caress. “He’s rather special to you, isn’t he?”
“Yes. I try not to let it show, but he is.” She was glad Erik had to take his hand away when he got up to change tapes. She was finding it hard not to lean against him.
He had shot four twenty-minute tapes, and each time he got up to rewind the one just played and exchange it with another, he returned to his seat and replaced his hand on her neck or back or shoulder. In some way, at all times, he was touching her.
Kathleen buried her face in her hands when her videotape of the spider came up. They laughed over the erratic movements of the camera, which made the spider look as if he were dancing on his web.
“I’m glad I didn’t aspire to be a videographer!” she exclaimed.
“You were handicapped. You couldn’t hold the camera yourself. My excuse is that I couldn’t see what I was taping.” He moved closer to her and settled his lips against her ear. “And I was distracted.” His mouth made a feather-light pass across her cheek. Then the video machine clicked off. “Damn,” he cursed softly under his breath as he got up to put in another tape.
Kathleen stood up. Her knees were trembling. “I’d better be going…” she said nervously.
“No. There’s one more. Sit,” he ordered.
Kathleen lacked the will to resist, and honestly wasn’t sure she wanted to. She dropped onto the bench again. Boldly, Erik placed an arm around her shoulders when he resumed his seat.
For several minutes, they were silent as they watched the children cavorting in the river. The screen went gray for a few seconds, then Kathleen gasped as she saw herself coming slowly out of the water.
She was the exclusive focus of the moving picture. The background of trees that lined the opposite side of the river was like a green curtain behind her body, outlining it in detail. She came out of the water with unintentional provocative grace. Her cinnamon-colored bikini almost made her appear naked. Wet hair clung to her neck and shoulders seductively, like the fingers of a lover. The water, sparkling in the sunlight, rolled down her limbs, her chest, her stomach, her abdomen, in glistening drops that looked like diamonds against her skin. On the tape, the tentative smile she had given him seemed alluring—shy, yet inviting.
The screen went blank again and a heavy silence pervaded the room. Kathleen, unable to move, continued to stare directly in front of her. The tape finally ran out and the machine clicked off. It sounded like a cannon’s boom. Still she sat motionless with her heart pounding, employing all the energy left in her body.
Erik touched her face with the back of his hand and, with sure fingers, turned her chin around to face him in the darkness.
“For my private tape library,” he whispered, and lowered his head to brush his lips across hers.
She pushed away from him in breathless caution. Standing up hastily, she took two steps toward the dais. “Your recorder…”
He came off the bench like a spring. His hand reached out with uncanny speed and clasped her around the waist. “Forget it,” he said gruffly. He swept her into his arms and against that hard, masculine body. Deftly, he released her hair from the barrette which held it atop her head and raked his fingers through the heavy skein. Entwining his fingers in it, he pulled her head back, forcing her to look at him. “Forget everything. Think only of this.”
His mouth closed over hers, assuming total possession and brooking no arguments to the contrary. But it was a gentle assault. His lips sipped at hers while his mustache tickled and teased until her lips opened in welcome. Then each secret of her mouth was discovered by the hungry exploration of his tongue.
Without her having been conscious of it, her hands had come up to caress the sides of his face. Now her fingers were weaving through that glorious blond hair and touching the strands that lay against his collar.
His hips moved against hers, and quite naturally she answered the movement and settled against his manhood. She felt, rather than heard, the breath catch in his throat, and then he moaned her name. His hand smoothed down her back, stopped long enough to appreciate her tiny waist, then moved to the soft swelling of her hips. The hand became bolder as he cupped her tenderly and pressed her tighter to him.
His mouth nibbled her earlobe and worked its way on a sensuous trail down to her neck. “What is that fragrance?” he breathed, and Kathleen groaned when she felt the tip of his tongue in the sensitive triangle at the base of her throat.
“Mitsouko,” she whimpered.
“Never heard of it.”
“No?”
“No. But I’ll never forget it now.”
His hand was on her rib cage and moving up. Oh, God, yes! Yes! His hand covered her breast. His palm fit over her as if it were made for that complementing purpose.
It began a slow, learning, rotating circle that suspended her in some euphoric atmosphere. Lowering his head to replace his hand, he nuzzled her with his nose and mouth. His breath was moist and hot through the cotton of her shirt. His lips formed her name around her nipple. She heard a sharp little cry, not realizing she had made it.
Once again, his hand was on her breast, and his thumb had taken over where his lips left off, gently raking her evertightening nipple. His mouth was at her ear, doing something delicious as he asked huskily, “Where do you want to go?”
“What?” she asked weakly, absently.
“Your cabin or mine?”
The words finally made it past that fog of sexual oblivion and doused her arousal like an icy shower. The flames of passion that were licking her body and igniting her spirit were extinguished with that one simple question.
She shoved herself away from him and fought to fill her constricted lungs with oxygen, taking several deep, uneven breaths.
“Kathleen, what—”
“I can’t… can’t be… be with you,” she said quickly, before she changed her mind.
“Why the hell not?” He broke off and looked at her for a moment before saying softly, “I’m sorry. That was an ungentlemanly thing to ask.” He shook his head ruefully and plowed frustrated fingers through the hair that was still mussed from her caresses. He chuckled without mirth. “I just wish you had told me this was ‘that time of the month’ fifteen minutes ago.”
It took her a moment before she realized what conclusion he had jumped to. Had it not been so dark, he would have seen how embarrassed she was by his supposition, but it was better to have him think she was having a period than for him to know the real reason she wouldn’t go with him.
He closed the gap between them and took her face in his hands. “Goodnight,” he said softly, and kissed her lightly on the lips, then once on her forehead.
“Goodnight,” she murmured. She had to keep herself from dashing out of the dining hall while he stood there and watched her.