Eden's Spell (11 page)

He was implacable and cold and his hands came to her shoulders like talons, firmly turning her around and shoving her toward the door.

“Mike—” she began, trying to wrench away. And then she broke off, because at the side of the house—right next to the concrete porch—there was a pair of squirrels. Cute little fluffy brown squirrels. Mating.

It was difficult to tell where one squirrel began and the other ended, so engrossed were they in one another. Squirrels were not usually passionate animals, but these squirrels were definitely passionate. She'd never seen creatures go at the act with such absolute abandon ever in her life.

“Man, are they going at it!” Jason laughed from the doorway.

“Oh!” Katrina gasped. “Jason, get back in the house! Now, this minute! I mean it!”

“Really, Mom, I'm almost nine! Don't make a federal case about a bunch of squirrels!”

Bunch of …? She turned around. Mike, hands on his hips, eyes angry, was staring at her. And beyond her, the small clearing in front of her house was full of the creatures—all blindly enjoying the nature of their sexes.

“Captain Taylor!” she thundered. “You pervert! I'll have your—” She cut herself off just in time. “I'll—I'll—I will see that you're court-martialed for this! Drawn and quartered and hung out to wash!”

“Just go back inside,” he told her rigidly.

She did, shoving Jason in before her. Then, in a high pitch of fury, she swung around and locked the bolt on the door.

“Mom, what are you doing?”

“He deserves to stay out there!” she snapped.

“Mom, come on, I'm old enough, I know that babies don't come from storks! If you're mad at him because of me—”

“I'm mad at him because he should be shot!”

“You can't leave him out in a storm!”

No, she couldn't. But she wanted to. She wanted to very badly. Why? Because the squirrels had embarrassed her?

No, dammit! Because she'd had a dose of the same damn stuff the squirrels had received! How the hell had she acted? She'd fallen asleep, passed out. But she'd awakened with her bathing suit on the floor next to the bunk and …

Blank. Dead end. She didn't want to know any more. All she wanted to do was wring his neck and—

“Katrina! Open the damned door!”

“Mom!”

Her back was to it, and she couldn't seem to force herself to move. She felt frozen, in time, in eternity. She had to keep him out. If he got back through the door again—”

“Dammit! I'm not about to while away the hours of a hurricane with a bunch of palm trees.”

She didn't move, but suddenly the door did. His fist slammed against it and the wood reverberated, cracking. She swallowed, miserably aware that he had the raw strength to break it down; she'd be left without a door—and with a very irate man on her hands.

“Stop it!” she shrilled out, and motioned for Jason to open the door.

When he opened it, Katrina noticed that the wind was already picking up again—from the opposite direction. It was definitely only the eye that had passed them.

Mike caught the open door before it could be swept by the wind; he closed it, bolted it, then leaned against it, staring at her as if she were a snake.

“That was stupid. Utterly stupid—and lethal!” he told her, heedless of Jason, the words bitten off and hoarse as he spoke them.

She retaliated with the only words that came to her mind.

“Squirrel murderer! Those poor creatures! Now they'll be caught in all that wind and rain because of your stupid little pink drug! They'll die without the sense to seek shelter!”

He left the door and stalked toward her. Instinctively, she backed away.

“They'll find shelter now. They haven't become blind or dumb! But you! You'd kill a man over your own sick little hang-ups?”

“Sick hang-ups! You son of a bitch! What—”

“Hey! Wait, guys, please!” Jason suddenly begged, reminding them both that he was there. “I'm a kid, remember? Grown-ups just hate to act like kids themselves in front of real ones, don't they?”

Katrina stared at her son, wishing for a moment that she could paddle his too-grown-up rear, then realizing that he was very, very right, and that even if she had been upset about the squirrels, she should have never done anything so childish and dangerous as locking Mike out.

And Jason was trying so hard….

She stared back at Mike. He was still tensed and rigid. His fingers were wound into fists that twitched as if they longed to move—for her throat? Or just for her arms, to shake her thoroughly? The muscles in his shoulders and chest were knotted with strain.

He closed his eyes and swallowed. His fingers tightened again, then relaxed, and he swung around with a shrug.

“Sorry, Jason. I really am,” he said. “Where were we? Ah, yes—I was just about to buy Park Place.”

“Hey—aren't you supposed to be nice and let me win?”

“Not on your life, son. If you play the game, you've got to be willing to get beaten!”

Willing to get beaten …

Katrina was not. She turned and fled back to her own room, in full retreat.

She came back out again, several hours later. She wasn't about to let Mr. Too-Perfect-Taylor fix dinner.

She didn't really trust much of what was left in the refrigerator, so she decided on grilled cheese sandwiches, Campbell's soup, and fruit salads—canned peaches and pineapples on beds of lettuce, with a decorative cherry set on top.

She didn't call Mike and Jason until she was ready for them, with the counter all neatly set. And when she did call them, Jason suddenly decided that he had to go to his own room to wash his hands.

Mike came in alone. They watched one another warily, like a pair of fencers taking their mark.

He went straight for the freezer, reached in, and found a can of beer. “Want one?” he asked her coolly.

“I didn't know that I had beer in the freezer,” she replied.

“I switched them—yesterday. The freezer retains more cold.”

“Umm. Except that this is my house. I don't remember offering you the beer.”

He blinked, but displayed no emotion. “If you begrudge the beer, the food, the sleeping quarters, anything, I can only promise that you'll be reimbursed.”

“Is that it, Captain Taylor? Reimburse people, and they'll just accept anything that way?”

“You want a beer or not?” He flipped the snap on the beer can; she heard the rush of air. But he barely extended it toward her.

“Yes, thank you, I
will
take one of my
own
beers!”

And she did, stepping toward him to snatch it away with such a vengeance that the beer sprayed out, yellow and foamy, all over his chest. And standing there, she was a little horrified and awed by her own act, and more than a little contrite, a state of mind nurtured by the silver wrath that seemed to touch her like a blaze from the depths of his eyes.

“Oh!” she murmured, dismayed. “Sorry …”

A little blindly she reached for one of the dinner napkins and made tentative sopping motions on his chest. And she felt his bare flesh, hot like fire, smooth and sleek. She was very close, and suddenly she was looking up into his eyes.

She trembled, horribly aware that there was something there, something in the way that he looked at her, something in the way that he could make her feel. It was as if he could see her naked, as if he could put his arms around her, and she would, come, fitting nicely, because she had been there before. It wasn't a leer. It was just a look that knew … and though it bore remnants of anger, it also bore tenderness, and something so intimately sexual that she might have sworn she had known him a long, long time; that they had been both friends and lovers for ages….

“Your hair,” he murmured, and he touched her, lifting her hair over her shoulder, smoothing it down her back, his eyes holding hers all the while. “The beer … you were getting beer on it.”

And he was getting his fingers tangled into it. It was a web of silk, of seduction.

“It's—it's good for hair, I hear,” Katrina heard herself mumble. “I have to wash it anyway.” She blinked and backed away. It was the only way to break the spell.

Jason walked into the room while Mike was still drying himself off. “Looks great. I love grilled cheese,” Jason said. “Too bad we don't have hurricanes more often.”

“Don't say that,” Katrina told him. “This storm is going to devastate a lot of people. The damage to docks and boats and homes and maybe even roads is going to be horrible.”

“I know.” Jason sighed. “I don't want that to happen—I just like grilled cheese.”

“I rather like them myself,” Mike said. He handed Katrina a fresh can of beer. Their eyes met just briefly before they both took their separate seats on either side of Jason.

And dinner went nicely. Jason talked about how much fun it was to come and go from school by boat; Mike told him a little about the ships on which he had served.

It was during that conversation that she learned that the
Maggie Mae
hadn't been a military vessel, that she had been his own.

“Gee, what a shame!” Jason said to him. “Man, it's too bad she got all wrecked.”

Mike shrugged. “The
Maggie Mae
can be replaced. Human life can't. We all got off safely, which is what counts.”

Katrina played with them that night—a rousing game of “Hungry, Hungry Hippos.” She was amazed that the rather silly game didn't seem to bother Mike in the least. Somehow, it was hard to imagine that the same man who commanded ships and spent hours in a laboratory could stretch out on a floor and enjoy trying to capture little balls in the mouth of a plastic hippopotamus.

She was somewhat nervous—and somewhat relieved—when Jason yawned and announced that he was going to bed. Even if there was something resembling a truce between herself and Mike, she meant to talk to him.

She kissed and hugged Jason, who then said good-night to Mike with a handshake and a look that seemed to hold a secret meaning. Katrina ignored it. She waited until Jason's door was closed, until she was quite certain that he was in bed and drifting off, before she started to talk.

He was standing near the mantel. She was still on the floor, stretched out by the game board, propped up on one elbow.

“We need to talk.”

“About the squirrels?”

“Yes. I want to know more about that drug!”

He walked around and sat across the board from her, legs crossed Indian style, his fingers lightly folded before him as he leaned toward her.

“Why?”

“Why?” she asked with amazement. “Because I have an eight-year-old son, and there are animals copulating all over my property!”

“That's nature, Katrina.”

“The hell it is! What—”

“What you really want to know is what effect the drug had on you, isn't it?”

It seemed that there was a taunt to his voice; and it had been exactly what she was worrying about, wondering about. She felt herself turn red; she longed to lash out and slap him. But he seemed to guess her intention, and before she could move, the little balls from the Hungry, Hungry Hippos game were suddenly streaking all across the tile, and she was on her back, with him straddled over her, carefully, warily holding her wrists to her side.

“Get off of me!”

“Un-unh. You're dangerous.”

“I am not.”

“You are.”

“Well, I'm going to be a whole bunch more so if you—”

She broke off. She didn't want him looking at her so intently. She didn't want to feel the heat of his thighs around her, or the strength of his hands wound around her wrists, feeling the race of her pulse. She didn't want to stare up at his chest, gleaming in the candlelight, or into his eyes, strange as smoke, or see the rueful twist of his lips, a smile that managed to be both threatening and amused and richly sensual.

“You were an angel, Mrs. Denver,” he told her. “You slept like a log.”

“Then why—why”—she closed her eyes, then opened them again—“why was I—”

“Naked?”

“Yes, Captain Taylor,” she drawled sarcastically. “That is the word.”

He laughed and shrugged. “Honestly, I must have dozed off. I don't know exactly when you removed it.” He was being sincere; she believed him. But then his voice changed. “Maybe you were—hot.”

“You—”

“Behave, Mrs. Denver!” he warned, his fingers tightening around her wrists.

She pursed her lips together and managed to kick him in the back with her heel. Her position was so twisted that she couldn't have caused him much harm. She only seemed to amuse him.

Amuse him—and set him into motion, rolling, coming back into a position where his legs pinned hers, where his fingers twined with hers, where his torso, his face, came to just a breath above her own.

She knew that it was coming long before it did. It was a moment forever ingrained in her mind in which his smile slowly faded, and the lazy smoke filled his eyes as he drank in hers. She was barely aware that his fingers left hers; keenly aware that they caressed her cheek, held her chin. She felt his lips, even before they touched hers, knew that they would be firm, that they would savor and caress, would not accept denial, would be tender and persuasive, then burst to fire. He knew her lips, parted them, tasted the texture of her teeth, and delved all the warm secrets beyond. Her heartbeat merged with his in the sweet fever of their mouths, in the wonderful pressure of his body that was so achingly good against hers.

She was afraid to trust him; she couldn't help but do so. Her fingers slid into the hair at his nape, his caressed her cheek and wound to her shoulder, pulling her closer. He moved away from her slightly, his breath still warm against her, his eyes a question, gentle, tender and strong, on hers.