Finding Laura (25 page)

At some point, Laura closed her eyes, the reflection she had been watching less important to her, less real, than the sensations he was arousing in her body. Her blouse was unbuttoned and pushed off her shoulders, and her head rolled against his shoulder in a helpless response when his hands cupped her breasts through the bra. She heard another sound escape her, a sound of such immeasurable longing that the pain of it hurt her throat, and her hands went back, searching for and finding his hard thighs, gripping with all her strength.

“Laura …” His voice was low, rough. He turned her swiftly in his arms, and his mouth came down on hers, almost bruising in its hungry force.

She thought she was melting, merging into him somehow, her entire body burning. His mouth on hers seduced and compelled, drawing her to him as surely and completely as the moon drew the tides. She fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, blindly desperate, and felt him unfasten her slacks, felt the cool slide of the material down her legs, and she automatically stepped out of them and nudged off her loafers and socks.

His shirt finally gave way, and she pushed it off his shoulders. His chest was hard, and springy hair teased her fingertips as she stroked him, and the harsh sound that escaped him when he lifted his head to stare down at her trailed over her nerve endings like a caress.

He wasn’t enigmatic now. His eyes burned and his rugged features were taut in a masklike expression of intense desire, and when he lifted his hands to frame her face, they were shaking. “God, Laura …”

Her mouth was wild under his and her hands fumbled
with his belt, somehow got the pants unfastened and pushed down over his narrow hips. Her bra was gone, and her breasts flattened against his chest when he held her fiercely against him. Laura felt the hard swell of his arousal and moaned when her body answered with a throb of need.

She wasn’t conscious of moving or being moved, but suddenly she was lying on her back, completely naked now, the blanket that had covered the mirror a jumbled bed beneath her, and he was there with her. His big hands were on her breasts, stroking and shaping, his thumbs rubbing across her tight nipples in a touch like fire. One of his knees pushed between her thighs in a rough and primitive caress, and his mouth on hers devoured.

Laura had believed that she had experienced the full range of sexual pleasure before. But now she realized that what she had felt before this had been merely a healthy young body’s response to simple physical stimulation. Like any sexual creature’s, her body was designed to react positively to a male for whom she felt an attraction; when he kissed her, when he touched her, she experienced pleasure.

But when Daniel touched her, she felt something far beyond a simple physical response. It was as if every cell of her body lacked something only he could provide, as if she were designed to merge with him, created to dovetail perfectly with him because he was the other half of herself.

“Daniel …” His mouth was on her breasts now, and Laura didn’t know how long she could endure the burning pleasure of it. Her fingers slid into his thick hair and she held his head against her, moaning. “Daniel, please …”

His lips slid up over the slope of her breast, up her throat, and slanted over her mouth. He kneed her thighs farther apart and then moved between them, and in a single powerful thrust was deep inside her.

For an instant they were both still, almost stunned,
their bodies as close as two people’s could be. Then Daniel was moving, driving himself into her in a fierce, quickening rhythm, and Laura cried out because the pleasure exploded all through her body without warning, like nothing she had ever felt before. Dazed and trembling in the aftermath, she held him with what strength was left to her while he groaned and shuddered with his own shattering climax.

T
HE DRY, STALE
air of the attic felt heavy, languid. Or, at least, that was what Laura blamed for her disinclination to move. Their bed was hard and unyielding, the thin blanket providing almost no cushioning between them and the unfinished wood flooring. With her head pillowed on his almost equally hard shoulder, she looked across his chest at the scattered jumble of their clothing, feeling her cheeks warm absurdly at the tangle of her panties and his shorts.

My God, what’s happened to me?

What she had seen—what she had thought she had seen—in the mirror seemed very dreamlike in retrospect. Unreal. Of course unreal. But no amount of reason, no logical arguments, could change the certainty she felt down to her bones. In countless mirrors all through her life, she had looked for him, knowing that one day he would be there.

It was, like so much in her life, inexplicable. And Laura shied away from thinking about it right now, because she was half afraid of any answer she might have arrived at.

Realizing, suddenly, that there were other people in this house, that Josie might have returned from her walk or Amelia and Madeline from the city, Laura tried to force herself to move, to push back away from the hard heat of his body and the disturbing comfort of his embrace. But her muscles had barely tensed when his arms tightened around her.

“Not yet,” he murmured.

She felt one of his hands moving slightly on her shoulder, his long fingers almost kneading, very gently, and wondered why that odd, probing touch made her feel as bonelessly contented as a cat in the sunlight. She kept her voice as low as his had been when she said, “The door isn’t even closed, is it?”

“No one ever comes up here.”

“You did.”

“I was following you.”

“I didn’t even know you were in the house.”

“I came back just after Amelia and Mother left.” He was silent for a moment, then said, “When I came upstairs, I heard you going toward the attic. So I followed.”

Laura didn’t want to disturb this peaceful aftermath, especially since she was all too sure it would be brief, but she couldn’t stop herself from raising her head from his shoulder and asking dryly, “Afraid I might find something up here?”

His harsh features were set once more in their unreadable mold, the pale eyes shuttered, and his voice was matter-of-fact when he said, “How could there be anything up here I would want to hide from you?”

Laura didn’t know the answer to that, but it bothered her that he had replied to her question with one of his own. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “Why did you follow me?”

He answered that without hesitation. “Because I knew this would happen.”

“How did you know?”
It was you in the mirror. All these years, it was you I looked for. Did you know that?

He lifted a hand and touched her face, one finger tracing the line of her brow, the shape of her cheekbone. His thumb brushed across her bottom lip in a slow, gliding caress. “I wanted it to happen,” he replied at last.

“And Daniel Kilbourne always gets what he wants?”

His mouth twisted slightly. “Don’t. Don’t turn this into a question of power. So much of my life is a question of power. But not this. You wanted it too, Laura. We both wanted it.”

She couldn’t deny it, didn’t even try. And when his hand slipped to the nape of her neck and pressed gently, she didn’t try to deny that want either. His lips played on hers, gentle at first and then hardening, demanding, and Laura didn’t care why he had followed her up here. She didn’t care about anything except feeling.

L
AURA BUTTONED HER
blouse slowly, trying to fix all her attention on the task even though she was intensely aware of him getting dressed just a couple of feet away. It vaguely surprised her that she was still so hypersensitive to his nearness, and it was more than a little disconcerting. A couple of hours of dynamic sex had only fed her appetite for him rather than satisfying it, and she didn’t know if she’d be able to bear it if this was all he wanted from her.

“So, what now?” she heard herself ask, unnaturally calm.

He came to her immediately, completely dressed but with the tail of his shirt untucked, and framed her face with his hands to make her look at him. He was smiling slightly, but his voice was matter-of-fact. “Now we go on. I want more than an afternoon, Laura. Stay with me tonight.”

She tried to think, tried not to let the determination she felt in him make the decision for her. “What about Amelia?” she murmured.

“What about her? This is just between you and me.”

But it isn’t. You know it isn’t
. His thumbs were rubbing back and forth across her cheekbones, and Laura wanted to tell him to stop because it wasn’t helping her to think straight.

“Laura?”

She shook her head finally, hoping he’d just accept that. But when his eyes narrowed, she knew it wouldn’t be so easy. Reluctant, she said, “I’m not trying to be coy or anything like that. It’s just … I wouldn’t feel comfortable spending the night with you here in this house.”

“Because of Amelia?”

“Her—and the others. This is your family home.” She shrugged, helpless to explain her feelings any clearer than that.

Daniel looked down at her for a moment, then nodded slowly. “All right. I’ll respect your feelings—for now. But we both know that this between us can’t be denied, don’t we, Laura? We both know it’s just beginning.”

“Yes,” she said, and wondered if he knew that she found the promise of that as terrifying as it was exhilarating.

A
melia didn’t expect you to come back to the house this afternoon, did she?” Laura asked as they walked down the main stairs to the ground floor. From the music room came the quiet and soothing notes of some sonata she recognized vaguely but couldn’t name, and she thought absently that Kerry did indeed spend a great deal of time at her piano.

Daniel stopped at the bottom of the stairs, looking at Laura as she paused on the first tread, and said, “No, probably not. I had a meeting canceled; otherwise I would have been in the city until late. Why?” His eyes were unreadable.

“Just wondering.” Her indifference wasn’t convincing, even to her.

But if Daniel wasn’t convinced, he clearly wasn’t curious enough to ask. Instead he took her hand and asked casually, “What were you doing before you went upstairs to explore? Painting?”

“Yes. In the conservatory.”

“Amelia’s portrait?”

“No. I thought I could use a little practice before I started on the portrait.”

“You don’t mind if I see it, do you?”

Since he was already heading for the hallway that led to the conservatory, and bringing her along with him, Laura’s voice was a bit dry when she answered, “No, of course not.”

He glanced at her as they walked down the hall, a genuine smile of amusement warming his face unexpectedly. “Am I being presumptuous? Taking too much for granted?”

Laura didn’t quite know how to answer that. “I don’t know. What are you taking for granted? That you can see my work? It isn’t exactly secret, parked in the conservatory for anybody to see. Josie looked at the painting earlier. Besides, you’ve already seen some of my sketches.”

“And that disturbed you,” he said perceptively.

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “I’m used to having my work seen and criticized; any artist is.”

“Your commercial work, certainly. But you’re very unsure of yourself with this kind of work, aren’t you, Laura?”

“You know I am.” He’d been standing right behind her when she had revealed as much the first day she’d come here. “But if I’m going to be successful outside the field of commercial art …”

He stopped in the doorway of the conservatory and looked down at her. “You’ll have to get used to even more criticism?”

“And probably have to grow a thicker skin.” She smiled. “Art critics aren’t exactly known for their compassion.”

“If a vote of confidence helps, you’ve got mine. I saw real talent in those sketches.” Without giving her time to respond, he kissed her, briefly but not at all casually.
When he raised his head, he was smiling. “May I see your painting?”

Laura nodded, wondering if she’d ever be able to refuse him anything. It was a scary question, because she thought she knew the answer. She walked beside Daniel, her hand still in his, and stood beside him when they reached the painting of a place she couldn’t name. The silence seemed to go on too long as he intently looked at it, his thoughts as usual unreadable, and Laura was just about to comment that she didn’t know why she had painted this particular scene, when he spoke.

“Beautiful. You’ve captured the peace and grandeur. But you’ve forgotten the house.”

She looked at him blankly. “The house?”

Daniel nodded and, with his free hand, indicated a lower corner of the painting, an area near the lake. “Here. The house was here.”

“You … know this place? I mean, it’s real?”

“Did you think it wasn’t?” He smiled slightly as he gazed down at her.

“Well, since I thought I painted it from my imagination …” She looked at the painting, frowning.

“You probably saw a picture somewhere,” Daniel said after a moment. “In a magazine, maybe. Things like that stick in our minds sometimes. Does it matter?”

Laura wasn’t sure, but she thought it did. “This place—where is it?”

“Scotland.”

That surprised her. “Have you been there?”

“Yes. As I said, you’ve captured it beautifully. One of my favorite places on earth.” He turned and pulled her gently against him, releasing her hand so that he could put both arms around her. “Definite talent, just as I thought.”

Easily distracted from the painting by the response of her body to his touch, Laura felt her arms slip around his
waist and looked up at him a bit helplessly. “Daniel, we shouldn’t—”

He kissed her, his mouth moving on hers with a lazy certainty that swiftly became something more urgent. As quickly as that, as easily as that, he ignited once more the overwhelming emotions and sensations she had felt in the attic. Her longing for him was intense and absolute, pushing everything else out of her consciousness, and if he had pulled her down to the tile floor there at the base of her puzzling painting amidst the flourishing greenery of the conservatory, she would not have uttered a word of protest.