An Irresistible Impulse (20 page)

“But you didn’t call. I kept waiting, hoping. You’ve been home for a full twenty-four hours!”

A sneer of self-disdain thinned his lips. “For the first time in my life I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything. Even after…after Lynn died, there were arrangements to make, things to be taken care of. But this time I was in a kind of limbo. One part of me kept thinking it would pass, that I could forget you, that I could live as I did before I met you. But everywhere I went I saw you, felt you, damn it, even smelled you!” He sucked in his breath. Only when he’d calmed did he
speak again. “I need you, Abby, in more ways than one. I just can’t live a nighttime existence; I want you in the day as well!”

“I’m here,” she murmured, tightening her grip on him. Like her eyes, her heart was filled to brimming.

When he hugged her then, she thought her lungs would burst. “I do love you, babe. You have no idea how much!”

“
You
have no idea how much I’ve wanted to hear you say that!”

Their bodies swayed while he held her fiercely. “I love you.” He said it again, then again. His lips were against her hair, but nothing could muffle the sound of his words. “I love you.”

This time Abby’s tears were of happiness. When Ben held her back, she mopped her cheeks. “I think I’ve cried more in the past few weeks than I have in half a lifetime!”

“We’ll just have to do something about that,” he whispered. Then he kissed her with all the love he felt and she immersed herself in him.

When he released her lips at last, she gasped. “I forget everything when you do that.”

“Oh-ho, no. No forgetting. This time we’re doing it right, with our eyes open the whole way.” He pressed warm kisses to her cheek.
“I love you, Abigail Barnes. Will you be my wife?”

“We’re already married!” she prompted in a stage whisper.

“Come on. Where’s your imagination?…Will you?”

Here was the sense of humor she loved. She cleared her throat. “Well, now…I don’t kn—”

A sharp squeeze to her middle cut off her breath. “Hmmm?”

“Yes.”

“Right now?”

She looked down with a grimace. “Ben, look at me! I mean, the first time was bad enough. But…a sweaty running suit and sneakers?”

“You’re right. We’ll have to do something about that.” His voice was hoarse; there was no doubt as to what he had in mind. He went to work on the zipper of her top. “Now I’m going to slide this down—like this—and then—here, move your arm a little, now the other—slip it off.” The top fell to the floor. “Then I’m going to unsnap—where in the hell’s the snap?” He leaned sideways. “There it is. Unsnapped and open.” He shimmied her pants over her hips and knelt to pull them down.

“What is this…you’re writing a manual now?”

“Shhhh. My concentration.” He struggled
to ease the pants over her sneakers. “What’s the matter here?”

“You should have taken the sneakers off first.”

“First?…Oh. Okay. Sit down.” With her pants bunched around her calves, she stumbled toward the chair. “Not there.” He took her arm and propped her on the edge of the bed. “Here.” Then he knelt to fumble with her laces. Several minutes later, sneakers, socks, and pants joined the top.

“Now.” He stood and rubbed his hands together. “T-shirt.” He reached for its hem then paused, squinted, and read its distorted message in disbelief. “ ‘Nurses like it in heavy doses’?”

“It was a joke.” She pulled the shirt over her head, turning it inside out in the process, and tossed it aside. Only her underwear was left. Ben eyed it as though it were a final exam. He studied it, peered over her shoulder, stepped back, studied again. “Ben! I feel foolish!”

He held up a hand. “Uh-uh. I want to do it the right way. No fumbling in the dark this time. Eyes open, remember?”

“But you’ve seen it all before—”

“Not
this
way.” Kneeling before her, he made ceremony of reaching for the front closing of her bra, slowly released it, as slowly unveiled its contents.

“Ben!” she whispered, more hoarse herself
now with the cool air stroking her breasts.

“Almost there,” he murmured distractedly. He reached to touch her, wavered in mid-air, withdrew with a taut clearing of his throat. “Stand up.” She stood and he slid her panties off. Then, impulsively, he leaned forward and kissed her, sending a burst of sparks ricocheting among her nerve ends. Swaying, she reached to his head for balance.

“Ben! I can’t take this!”

He looked up in innocence. “Should I stop?”

“Get
on
with it. My legs have been through hell today, and they’ll only hold me so long.” As it was, they were trembling badly.

He straightened. “Okay. Now…you.”

“Me…what?”

“Undress me.” He whisked his sweater up over his head. “There. I’ve given you a hand. Now you do my shirt.”

“This is ridiculous,” she muttered, but quickly released the buttons of his shirt, pulled it free of his slacks, and tugged it from his shoulders.

Her self-control couldn’t compare with his; she didn’t even try. The past two nights without him had left her starving. Without compunction, she slid her arms around his middle and drew herself close to savor the
warmth of his skin. The contact of her breasts with his harder man’s texture was electric.

“Abby…”

“Mmmmmm?”

“My pants, Abby. Hurry.”

She moved her lips against his chest. “What’s wrong, Ben? I thought we were taking this step by step.”

“We are. But you’re forgetting the steps.”

“Wrong. This is a crucial step.” Inhaling the scent that was his alone incited her all the more. She moved seductively against him, then drew a kiss out along his collarbone.

“Abby…”

She leaned back with a sigh. “Pants?”

“Pants.”

Easily unbuckled, unzipped, removed. Shoes and socks likewise. When only his briefs remained, she stood on tiptoe and draped her arms over his shoulders. “Kiss me,” she whispered, tipping up her face. His lips were no more than an inch away.

“You’re not done—”

“Kiss me. Then I’ll finish.”

She could feel the taut control of his limbs, hear the ragged labor of his lungs. She knew he couldn’t wait much longer.

His mouth opened, as did hers. Their lips touched lightly. His tongue traced the line of
her teeth, then plunged deeper while he palmed her back and pressed her ever closer.

“I love you,” he rasped when he finally paused to breathe. Then he made short work of the briefs himself, pulled down the quilt and set her back on the bed. “No blind impulses this time, Abby. You know what we’re doing, don’t you?” The pleading edge to his voice tugged at her heartstrings.

Looking up at him, she felt the surge of love through her veins. Her fingers smoothed the last of the furrows from his brow, then touched his eyes, his nose, his mouth. “I do know, Ben. We’re making love.”

He shook his head. “We’re
loving
each other, babe, just as we’ve been doing all along. You said it once; you begged me to love you. Then I refused to acknowledge it. But no more. We’re two thinking individuals; it’s about time we know the facts.”

“And Wyeth’s Law?”

“Wyeth’s Law has been repealed. Things are going to be different now—slow, logical, rational.”

“Oh?” Smiling coyly, she stretched beneath him. Her hands slid down his body, outlining his hips before moving inward. When they reached their goal, they knew just what to do.

Ben moaned. “Maybe not slow…” Swallowing hard, he reached for her, and they
were swept once again into the fiery vortex of passion. Heights of rapture later, they wondered about logical and rational too.

“I think I’ll have to revise my thinking again,” he murmured sleepily. “There must be some compromise we can reach.”

Content to lie against him, with the heat of their joining now a warm memory, Abby sighed softly. “We’ve reached it.”

“Mmmmmmm.” He shifted to draw up the quilt, then took her in his arms once more. “How about a honeymoon?”

“Sounds good.”

“Now.”

“When?”

“Tonight…tomorrow…Tuesday…”

“Don’t you have to teach?”

“This is another emergency. Someone will cover for a couple more days…. How about you?”

She burrowed more snugly against his shoulder. “The worst of the colds and flu won’t set in for another month. I think the office can survive without me for a few more days…. But I haven’t any clothes!”

“None needed.”

“Mmmmm.”

They slept then, awakening later in the evening to call downstairs for room service. As they attacked a tray of hot steak sandwiches, chili, potato skins, fruit and wine, so
they tackled those other topics they’d been unable to discuss earlier.

“Tell me about the deliberations, Ben. You refused to talk about them, and I didn’t want to push. But I felt so left out, after all I went through. Was it as bad as you let on? Or were you just upset at having married me?”

“I was upset that you’d gotten to me so deeply. I needed to believe that I wasn’t involved. Keeping my thoughts from you was one way. God, I was a bastard.”

Abby raised her glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

Ben did as well, then grew serious. “The deliberations
were
terrible. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done…having to vote for a guilty.”

“You didn’t think he was?”

“I wasn’t sure. There were several of us who felt that way. I’m afraid I held out the longest.”

“It was your job, Ben. That’s how our system works. But why…what held you back?”

“I sympathized with the guy! I knew how confused
I
was over
you
. There were times when I felt that
I’d
lost control of my senses. So who was I to say that Bradley couldn’t have been temporarily insane?”

“What finally decided the issue?”

Sighing, he put down the last of his sandwich. “Love.”

“Love?”

“I know that may sound whimsical in light of the gravity of the case. But in my mind the issue was whether Derek Bradley loved Greta Robinson. If he loved her, he might easily have been driven mad with wanting her and seeing her beyond his reach. God only knows
I
felt that way, and I wouldn’t even admit to myself that I loved you!” Leaning across the tray, he pressed a gentle kiss to her lips. When he sat back, Abby eyed him smugly.

“The defense based its case on the theory of an irresistible impulse. What you’re saying is that—”

“—
love
is an irresistible impulse. Those times during the trial, those nights we spent together, we may have simply thought we were being reckless…but we were wrong. There’s a big difference between an
irresponsible
impulse and an
irresistible
impulse. What we did was in the name of love. There was nothing irresponsible about it.” He grinned, ear to ear and winningly. “Irresistible, yes. Totally irresistible.”

“I’ll say.” She mirrored his grin. “You
are
irresistible, you know that?” It was her turn to lean forward and kiss him, which she did both with due relish for his lips and due care for the tray between them. “We must make quite some picture,” she remarked as if surveying
the scene from afar. “Two adults who should know better, sitting on a bed wearing nothing but crumbs here and there…it’s indecent!”

“It may be indecent, but you’d better get used to it.” With that, he moved the tray to the table and returned to take her in his arms. “You’ll have to be patient with me,” he spoke more softly. “Now that I’ve accepted the fact of our love, I’m apt to be hopelessly possessive. If anything should happen to you—”

“Shhhhh. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“I’ll do my best to make sure it doesn’t!” He moved his mouth along her forehead. “You know something, Mrs. Wyeth?”

“Uh-uh. What?”

“You’re pretty irresistible yourself.”

“Oh?”

“Oh.” End of conversation. This time, she had no complaints.

Within, a warm fire blazed. Before it lay Ben, propped lazily on a bed of pillows, with Abby propped serenely on him. The howl of the wind and the crackle of the fire were an atmospheric accompaniment to their quiet intimacy.

“That was fun this afternoon,” she said softly.

“Mmmm. Lucky the snow held off.”

“I thought we were finished for the season.”

He chuckled. “So did I. Not that I really minded those storms.” They’d spent most of each one quite happily in each other’s arms. “But it’ll be easier for you when the warm weather comes.”

“I’m fine now. The first three months are always the worst.”

He held her closer. “Thank goodness.” For a while the fire mesmerized them both. “It
was
nice today. They all looked wonderful.”

“Even George with that…that…”

“Mustard tie?”

She laughed. “Poor guy. His taste is from hunger.”

“Speaking of hunger, old Bernie put on quite a meal at that restaurant of his. Was it his idea to have the reunion?”