Loving Laura (The Cantrelle Family Trilogy) (17 page)

Strong hands gripped her arms, but she fought against them, screaming and sobbing at the same time.

“Laura, Laura, it’s all right! It’s just the electricity. Calm down.” The hands tried to subdue her. “You’re safe. You’re here with me.”

She couldn’t stop screaming. The blackness closed in on her. It was suffocating her. She couldn’t get any air. She kept trying to beat the hands away, but they only held her tighter.

“Laura, it’s okay. I’m here. You’re all right. Please, Laura. Please,
chére,
please stop.”

“No, no!” The words were ripped from her throat. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to escape the panic and hysteria and unreasoning terror, shaking violently and hitting out against Neil. The darkness, the terror, was everywhere, surrounding her, suffocating her, pressing in on her from all sides. “No! No!” She flailed at Neil, sobbing and gasping, her nails connecting with his face as one arm tore free from his grasp.

“Laura, stop it! Stop it! You’re okay. It’s okay. You’re safe. I’m here. I won’t let anything happen to you.” His arms pinned hers to her sides, and he pulled her close to him. “Shh. Calm down. Calm down,
chére.”
He whispered against her ear, his voice soft and steady.

“Neil, Neil,” she cried, grasping at him.

“Shh, shh, it’s okay.”

She clutched at him, tears streaming down her face, and he held her tightly, gently kneading her back, all the while speaking softly and soothingly. “I can’t stand this. I can’t stand it.” She could hear her breath coming in ragged gasps, hear the hysteria in her voice. She squeezed her eyes shut, the self-induced darkness more bearable than the inky blackness of the motionless elevator, with unknown horrors waiting to pounce.

She buried her face against Neil’s neck, unable to stop crying, and he stroked her hair and her face, murmuring words meant to be comforting. She couldn’t seem to stop shaking, and she could feel another scream building and she jerked her face free.

“Neeeeilllll…”

As the scream echoed around them, he grasped her face in his two hands, and his mouth covered hers, smothering the scream in her throat. At first she fought him, pushing against his chest, but her efforts were useless and ineffectual.

Her heart pounded like a mad thing, and her strength slowly ebbed away. As soon as she stopped fighting him, he released her mouth, and she collapsed against him.

“Neil,” she whimpered, the sound like the mewling of a kitten. There was no strength left in her body. Tears streamed down her face.

“Shh, baby, don’t cry.” He brushed the wetness from her cheeks. “Don’t cry. It’s all right. I’m here.”

“Neil...”

She slid her arms around him and turned her face into his neck, burrowing into his warmth, feeling as weak as if she’d just survived a long illness. She took a deep breath, and he stroked her hair and nuzzled her face. He smelled like rain, and soap, and his spicy after-shave—all comforting, ordinary, everyday smells.

She was still shaking, but now she could feel the heat of his body, its hard length pressed against her, and she could feel the strong beat of his heart. His hand slid under her hair, stroking her neck. The other caressed her face, lifted her chin, and brought her mouth slowly back to his. He murmured soft words, his breath mingling with hers, and he kissed her again and again, coaxing, comforting, tender, openmouthed kisses that slowly changed the tempo of her breathing and the cadence of her heart.

“Laura, Laura,” he murmured. “So sweet. You’re so sweet.” He kissed her eyes, her cheeks, brushed his lips over her nose and down the side of her neck. His breath was moist and heated, and now her shiver wasn’t caused by fear, but by a dawning awareness of the sensations he was causing by his kisses.

Laura moaned. “Neil...” Her body arched and she leaned her head back as his lips brushed over her sensitive skin. Her fists clutched handfuls of his sweatshirt and she pressed herself closer. Need pulsed through her.

With a sound that was half moan, half grunt, his mouth captured hers once again. His tongue swirled inside, and a fine trembling raced through her body as his hands abandoned her face and moved over the rest of her body, stroking and caressing, kneading and demanding, igniting nerve endings wherever they touched, fueling the need that was building rapidly.

Now she was touching him, too, and as his hands pushed her sweater up, and his mouth dropped to the hollow between her breasts, she buried her face in his hair, breathing him in, taking his strength and the safety and warmth he offered, drawing it into herself. She could feel the coiled strength of his body as her hands slid under his sweatshirt, curling into the crisp mat of hair on his chest, then sliding around against the taut muscles of his back.

“Laura,” he whispered, the sound ragged and uneven. With fumbling fingers, he found the hooks of her bra, and when his hands cupped the bare skin of her breasts, his thumbs rolling back and forth against the nubs, something tight and painful burst within her, and all thought, all reason, all sanity, disappeared. Laura strained toward him, tightening her arms around him, fitting her body against his. A primitive need poured through her, consuming her like wildfire consumed a forest.

His hands molded and shaped, moving roughly over her body, and Laura responded to the strength and raw desire in the fierce caresses, the need inside her so intense it was the only thing in the world that mattered. The only sounds were the rasp of their breathing and Laura’s moans as they kissed greedily. Without even realizing it had happened, Laura found herself on the floor and Neil had covered her body with his own.

Every part of Laura—her body, her mind, her heart— was aware of what was happening between them, but she wasn’t experiencing it with her brain or with rational thought. She was feeling it with her emotions and her senses. She was filled with a throbbing awareness of this great aching void inside her, a void that had been a part of her from earliest childhood, a void that she had always known existed and she now knew Neil was the only person in the world who could ever fill it.

He kept kissing her as his hands stroked her bare skin- demanding, bruising kisses—and she moaned and cried, the sounds incoherent and beseeching. She needed him. She needed him. The kisses weren’t enough. She wanted him inside her. She wanted him to fill her up. She wanted him to take her. She didn’t want him to be gentle. She wanted to feel his strength. She needed his power, his force, his dominance. Now. She needed it now.

“Laura, my God, Laura,” he said, as her body writhed under his hands and tongue.

Laura felt as if she were coming apart, as if she were made out of glue and papier-mache and Neil was peeling off the layers, exposing the empty core inside. Tears slid out of her eyes, and she couldn’t stop them. “I need you, Neil. I need you.” She dug her fingers into his back.

She heard the rasp of his zipper. He yanked her skirt up and pushed her underwear down. “Now!” she insisted, lifting herself to meet him.

And then he was thrusting himself into her.

Suddenly, all her desperation and frenzy and fear were over. As soon as she felt his heat, and the throbbing life within her, she wound her legs around him, and drew him in as far as she could, knowing everything really was okay, that as long as she had Neil, here, part of her, nothing could hurt her.

A radiance spread through her, and with it, a sense of peace and homecoming. She no longer felt empty. She no longer felt alone. She no longer felt as if she were standing on the outside of the circle watching the people within.

And as he began to move inside her, she felt warm and good and protected, safe, and loved.

“Neil,” she murmured. “Neil.” His name was like an incantation or a sigh, and she said it again. “Neil.” She drew his head down, and savored the taste of him. Straining against him, she matched her movements to his.
Yes,
she thought.
Yes. Take me. Take me.
Nothing in her life had ever felt as good as having this man—this man who was her universe—inside her. All she wanted was to give him as much as he’d already given her. She tightened her legs around him, concentrating on helping him.

“Laura!” he cried as his hot seed burst within her. Pride and happiness filled her, and she gripped him tightly, while he shuddered from the aftermath of their union. As they clung together their breathing finally slowed. Laura could feel his heart beating against her own, and she had never felt so close to another human being, never known that anything could feel so right. She could still feel him inside her, and she wanted him to stay there forever. For the first time in her life she understood how the whole can be better and stronger than the sum of its parts.

Together, she and Neil could be invincible. They belonged together, and nothing and no one could ever change that.

* * *

Oh, my God. What had he done? In the aftermath of their chaotic lovemaking, reality crept slowly back, chilling and sobering. Neil had only meant to comfort her and calm her down. Instead, he’d lost all control and practically attacked her. What had happened to him? Where had his reason gone?

Very gently—he didn’t want to hurt her—he moved away from her, rolling off her and sitting up. When she tried to stop him, he took her hands and said, “Look, Laura, we’ve got to talk about this.”

He couldn’t see her at all in the darkness, but he knew her eyes would be big and luminous as they stared at him. He could see how her lower lip would jut out, and how vulnerable she would be. Part of him wanted to gather her back up into his arms and kiss her eyes and cheeks and reassure her, tell her he would always take care of her, that nothing would ever hurt her again.

The other part—the part that even now was cringing away from the cold truth that he had broken a code of honor so old and so ingrained that he had never known any other—was trying to figure out how they were going to live with what they’d done. How they were going to face each other. How they were going to face Norman.

“Neil--”

“Come on, Laura, let’s get ourselves straightened up, okay? The lights could go on at any minute. You don’t want anyone to see us like this, do you?” He tried to make his voice gentle and calm even though he felt anything but calm.

“No.” The word was a whisper in the darkness.

Jesus, what was he going to do? Mind spinning, Neil zipped up his jeans, smoothed back his hair, and tried to regain his composure. After a few minutes, he could hear her moving around.

“Here,” she said. “Here’s my comb. Do you want to comb your hair?” She sounded okay.

But when he handed the comb back to her, he felt her hand tremble. He reached for her, and she came into his arms without any resistance. He closed his eyes as he held her close, one hand stroking her silky hair, the other splayed across the firm muscles of her back.

She put her arms around him, and they didn’t talk at all, just held each other. Neil finally let himself think about her—not what they were going to do or the rightness or wrongness of what they’d done together—but Laura herself. How he felt about her, and how he’d felt when they were making love.

The experience had been like nothing he’d ever known before. Knowing how much she needed him, feeling her desperation and emptiness as he held her and comforted her, and then the tortured sweetness of her kisses and the way she clung to him, he had been assaulted by feelings and emotions that he’d kept buried for years. All the aching loneliness and yearning that had been a part of him for a long time began to splinter and fall away, and when he finally felt Laura take him in, all warm and loving and welcoming, he no longer felt as if he belonged to himself. Somehow, in the space of minutes, he had become a part of Laura, and she had become a part of him.

And now, as his fingers delved in her hair, and he listened to her even breathing and felt the warm, firm contours of her body, and breathed in her clean, feminine scent, he knew he loved her. And the knowledge tore at him, because he also knew his love for her wouldn’t change anything.

“Laura, we have to talk,” he said again, and even to his own ears, his voice sounded strained.

She lifted her head and he felt her warm breath feathering his skin. “I know we do.”

He brushed a kiss against her forehead. “Let’s sit down, okay?”

“All right.”

They sat on the floor, up against the back wall of the elevator, and Neil took her hand. It felt warm and smooth and fragile as her fingers closed around his.

“I don’t know where to begin,” he admitted.

“I love you, Neil,” she said quietly. “Why don’t we begin there?”

Neil closed his eyes. A flame of happiness burst inside him, but it was no good. He knew that. “Laura, please don’t say things like that.”

“But why? It’s the truth. I think I loved you from the first day I saw you.” There was a tremor in her voice. “Don’t you love me?”

He couldn’t stand it. He wanted so much, so much he could never have. “Oh, God. I.. .I don’t want to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you.”

She went still. He could feel her stillness in the way her hand relaxed its grip. “What does that mean, Neil?”

“It means how I feel isn’t important. It means I’m not free to love you.”

She was silent for a long time. Then she said, “Neil, I understand how you feel. You feel guilty. You think we’ve betrayed Norman. And I... I know we have to talk about Norman. But first we have to settle things between us, then we can decide what to do about Norman.”

He closed his eyes against the weakness in him, the part that wanted to say the world was well lost for love, but Neil knew he couldn’t do that. He had to live with himself. “Laura,
chére,
” he said, “there can never be an
us.
”

“Neil, don’t say that. How can you say that after what’s happened tonight? How can we go on as if it didn’t happen?”

He heard the desperation in her voice, but he couldn’t allow himself to give in to it. Their situation was hopeless, and she would have to face it. But he also knew how vulnerable she was, and he couldn’t stand to hurt her any more than was necessary. “We
must
go on as if tonight never happened. We have no other choice.”