His for the Taking (21 page)

‘Thought you could do with an extra glass of wine after that workout,’ Zoe said, her generous mouth in an impish smile.

‘Are you implying I had trouble keeping up with you?’ He hadn’t, but she’d pushed him hard; pushed both of them hard, keeping a quick pace up some pretty steep climbs. Their bodies had worked together, as smoothly as when they made love. And then, when they were finished—

‘Do you mean on the roads, or in the shower?’

‘Both.’ She raised an eyebrow at him, and he relived their post-exercise workout in the shower, both of them slick with sweat and soap and overcome with desire for each other. He’d remembered to bring a condom this time and they’d had sex, as hard and fast as their run, up against the tiled wall of the shower. Her cries had been sweeter than the sound of falling water.

He got up and moved around the table to sit on the other side, straddling the bench she sat on. ‘We were together all the way.’

He pulled her towards him so that she leaned back against him, and began to rub the muscles of her neck and shoulders. Zoe made a low sound of contentment and relaxed under his hands.

Beyond the golden candlelight halo around the table, the night was velvet black and silver. They were far enough from the road not to hear any cars. In the silence as Nick massaged Zoe’s back he heard a soft hooting from the forest surrounding them.

He didn’t stop, but he pricked his ears. ‘Hear that?’

‘I hear nothing. After the Bronx, it’s almost unnatural.’

‘Listen.’ It came again, a staccato tenor flute.

‘I feel like I’m in a wildlife documentary. What is it, an owl?’

‘A great horned owl.’

Another hoot, and Zoe said, ‘It sounds eerie.’

‘One of the most terrifying things I ever did involved hooting owls.’

‘What happened? Did one of them mug you?’

He moved his hands down the column of her spine, kneading the muscles gently. She ‘mmm’ed with pleasure.

‘It wasn’t far off from a mugging, actually. Owls are very territorial and I was doing a project mapping their territories in a certain area. It involved going out into the woods at night, with a map, a tape recorder, and a crash helmet.’

‘And you say New Yorkers are weird.’

‘I would walk around the area playing a recording of an owl hooting. Usually the owls hooted back. Then you’d mark it on the map. Unless you were near a nesting female. Then they’d hurtle down towards you and try to rip your head off with their talons.’

Zoe burst into laughter. ‘You’re kidding me, Boy Scout.’

‘I’m serious. It was an amazing adrenaline rush: walking around a silent forest, looking up into the darkness in anticipation of a bird with a five-foot wingspan, huge talons and a curved beak swooping down out of nowhere.’

‘You did this for fun?’

‘I did it for conservation. But it was fun, too.’ He reached her waist, and paused. ‘Testing the boundaries to see at what point they’ll be defended. It’s not all that different from hanging out with you.’

Zoe laughed again, but this time it was less wholehearted. ‘Yeah, I’m finding out all kinds of affinities with birds since meeting you.’

He kissed the warm side of her neck. ‘You’re different today, though.’

‘Sometimes it gets tiring fighting.’ She sighed, and he could feel the small tensing and relaxing of her body.

‘I like the strong Zoe. And I like the defences-down Zoe, too.’

They both listened for the bird again, but it was quiet.

‘I think I know what I’m going to do with Xenia’s money,’ Zoe said.

‘What’s that?’

‘I don’t need it. I like working. I think I might keep a little bit of it so that I can give up driving the cab and maybe set up my own exercise studio somewhere. The rest of it, I’m going to give away.’

‘To who?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s not difficult to find people who need money. I’ll give some of it to sports charities for inner-city kids, because I see a lot of those whose lives could really be turned around. Maybe I’ll make you happy and give a bunch of it to wildlife conservation. I’m not sure yet, exactly. The one thing I do know is that I’m going to sell Xenia’s houses and give the money to organisations for homeless runaways in New York.’

He smiled and kissed her on the neck to show his approval. But Zoe’s reaction to Xenia’s house here hadn’t escaped Nick. ‘You’re going to sell all of the houses?’

She hesitated for the barest of split seconds. ‘Yes.’

Nick used his hands on Zoe’s waist to gently turn her around on the bench so that she faced him. It was going to ruin the tranquil mood between them, but he needed to ask this question. It seemed like a question he’d been asking more or less for most of his life.

‘Zoe, why are you leaving?’ he asked.

This time, she definitely stiffened under his loose grasp. Her blue eyes, so lively and expressive, turned from his.

‘Like I said. I need to sort out all this money stuff. Fifty million dollars doesn’t give itself away, you know.’

‘You don’t need to be in New York to write cheques. Or are you looking forward to seeing the gratitude of the people you give it to firsthand?’

At that, she did meet his gaze head-on. ‘Don’t be silly, I’m not giving it away for the gratitude. I don’t want the money, and lots of other people could use it. Xenia gave it to me so that I could do what I liked. I’ll give it away in her name.’

‘So you don’t need to be in New York to do that.’

She took a gulp of wine. ‘Nick, I’m a New Yorker. The city made me what I am. I can’t just pick up sticks and leave it.’

‘You picked up sticks and went there in the first place. And your apartment in the Bronx didn’t exactly look like you were putting down roots.’

Zoe snorted. ‘Just because I’m no interior decorator you think that’s a reason for me abandoning my whole life and coming up here to the middle of nowhere?’

‘You can’t fool me. You like Maine.’

‘I like Dairy Queens, too, but I wouldn’t go and live in one. What would I do up here?’

‘Open an exercise studio, like you said. People in Maine exercise, too. You could link it in with some of the local sports—cross-country skiing, kayaking, rock-climbing.’ He heard the owl again, and he gave her half a smile. ‘Owl dodging.’

She didn’t return his smile; instead she had the firm-chinned look he knew came with her defending her territory.

‘Nick, five minutes ago you were all about my reconciling with my family. Now you’re trying to convince me to drop everything and stay up here in the woods. Why are you trying to get me to stay?’

He’d had more arguments lined up, but that brought him up short, because he hadn’t thought about any reasons. He just wanted her to. Badly.

‘You’d be happy here, I think. You have that way of getting along with people but respecting their space that’s valued in New England. And you seem more relaxed here, Zoe. More yourself. And I know I’ve only known you a little while,’ he added quickly, because she looked as if she was going to interrupt him, ‘but it’s obvious. You’re happier.’

‘Yes, well, I’m also having great sex on a regular basis, which tends to relax a person, too. It’s not like there’s magic in the Maine air.’

‘And there’s another reason.’ He took her hand in his and raised it to his mouth. He kissed each of her knuckles, then the sensitive inside of her wrist, and he heard her breath catch. ‘Do you really want to walk away from this, Zoe?’

‘Tonight? No.’ She touched his hair with her other hand, a light butterfly stroke to push it back from his forehead. ‘You’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen by candlelight; I’d have to be insane.’

‘So what makes you so sure you’re going to want to walk away tomorrow?’

She shook her head. ‘Oh, come on, you always knew I was leaving; this has been temporary from the start. This kind of—’ she searched for the word, waving her hand in the air ‘—lust doesn’t last for ever. It’s great now, but it’ll burn out and then here I am, up in the middle of nowhere while you’re out climbing trees or whatever.’

‘You don’t know it’ll burn out.’

‘Nick, sex between us is like this wild, uncontrollable force. That can’t last and I’m not going to throw away my life in New York and shack up with you because of it. I’d have thought you’d have figured that out by now. I don’t change my life for anybody.’

‘You wouldn’t need to change anything, Zoe.’

She shook her head again, this time so vigorously her hair feathered around her face. ‘Oh, yes, I would.’

‘How?’

Zoe drank down the rest of her wine and stood up. ‘If I have to explain it to you, there’s no point.’ She began stacking the plates they’d used for their dinner.

Nick watched her. He had no idea what to say. He’d never had to convince someone not to leave him before. Maybe he’d even chosen the girlfriends he had chosen, fragile and in need of protection, because he’d known they would never leave him.

And of course, with his father, he’d never had a chance to convince him not to leave.

Nick reached out and circled his hand around Zoe’s wrist. ‘Stop,’ he said. ‘Come here.’

For a split second it seemed as if she’d resist him, but then she relented. She stepped nearer to him, and he stood.

‘Let me show you why you need to stay,’ he said. He leaned over and blew out the candles, and then he swept her into his arms and carried her into the darkness.

The difference, without the candlelight, wasn’t that great and his eyes quickly adjusted to the starlight. He walked, sure-footed, towards the graceful ragged black shapes of the trees.

He liked carrying her. She didn’t go limp or clingy; she relaxed into his arms and held on lightly, almost casually, as if she trusted him not to drop her. The side of her breast pressed against his chest and her hip bumped against his stomach not far above his crotch.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘Just here, near the woods.’ He knelt and set her down on the soft, even grass not far from where the trees started. He could smell her fresh scent mixed with the earthy pine.

‘Why?’

‘Because I want to make love to you, slowly, outdoors.’

‘I won’t argue with that.’ She reached up and began to pull him down to her.

He stopped her with his hands on her arms. ‘Not so fast. I said I wanted to make love to you. And I said I wanted to do it slowly.’

He lay down on his side next to her; in the shadowy light he could see her face as a silver and white glow. He took her chin between his fingers and thumb and stroked it, then savoured the softness of her cheek.

‘You said that our sex was wild and out of control. And it has been, and that’s been amazing. But I want to show you it doesn’t always have to be that way. It can be slow and easy and gentle if we want it to be. It can be me giving pleasure to you instead of us both taking it. It can be—’ he leaned forward and kissed her, lightly on the cheek where he’d just touched her, and then in the soft hollow underneath her ear ‘—whatever we want it to be.’

‘Nick—’

He silenced her with a soft kiss on her mouth, and another. She tasted of wine and sweetness and with a small sigh she opened her lips to him.

Nick absolutely loved kissing this woman. Her mouth, so full of smart remarks and teasing smiles, melted under his. Her teeth were smooth and her tongue was a delicious flirt. The warm wetness of her mouth made him think of the warm wetness inside her, and need flared in him.

He ignored it, and concentrated on the textures of her mouth and the variations of her kiss, the way her breath feathered against his face and the way her body moved restlessly beside his. Although she was following his lead and kissing him unhurriedly, he could feel a tenseness in her body, maybe caused by desire, maybe by something else.

Maybe the something else that was going to lead her away from him.

‘Relax, Zoe,’ he whispered against her lips. He smoothed his hand down the length of her torso, from her graceful bare neck, between her breasts, to rest on her flat stomach. Through the material of her shirt he could feel her heart beating fast, and he could feel that her muscles were tight. He slipped his hand underneath her shirt and ran his fingertips in soothing circles around her navel. Her skin was incredibly smooth and amazingly precious and Nick knew what he had to do.

He wanted to love her with every part of his body, with every breath he took and every word he said. He wanted them to be together, truly together, here outside in the best place he could imagine. It was something he’d always wanted, even before he’d met her, because he loved being alone, but being together was something even better.

He wanted to make this time with her so perfect she wouldn’t be able to bear to leave. And that meant getting her to open up to him.

He dropped another kiss on her lips, and then another, and then he said, ‘Trust me, Zoe. I want you to put yourself in my hands. I want to take care of you and give you pleasure.’ She began to say something and he kissed her again before she could, because he had one more word to say.

‘Please.’

He held his breath and waited.

Nick Giroux and his husky sincerity. It got to her every time.

Zoe looked up into his face, blue and silver shadow. She could feel his warm breath on her face and his big body close. She couldn’t quite see his eyes, but she remembered how he had looked the first time he had said ‘please’ to her, outside her great-aunt’s apartment when he had been so sure that his father was inside that she had started to believe it, too.

She hadn’t been able to resist him.

This time, he wasn’t just asking her to give him what he wanted; he was asking her to give him what she wanted, more than anything in the world.

To be soft and trusting with Nick. To put herself in his hands and relax into the thrilling safety of his embrace. To abandon herself to the pleasure he gave her and feel it even more keenly because it was born out of emotion.

She’d been full of excuses earlier. Her desire for him wasn’t ever going to burn out. Saying it would, though, was easier than admitting she was afraid that he’d get tired of her some day.

But tonight she could at least pretend that it was permanent.