Shifting Shadows (17 page)

She pulled the dress over her head, unfastened her bra and tossed both articles aside, offering her breasts, her body to him. He didn
’t move but gazed down at her, his eyes alight with stars from a hot summer night. “Analise,” he said, his voice deep and unsteady, “do you know what you’re doing, what we’re doing?”

She had to concentrate to make sense of his words. Her body
and her heart were racing ahead, didn’t need or want signals from her brain. “What we’re doing?” she repeated.

“
Have you thought about tomorrow? What if you regret this when you regain your memory?”

“
I’ve waited for too many tomorrows. I don’t need to have all my memories to know I want this, I want you.” She slid her hands under his knit shirt, over the hard muscles, up to tangle in the wiry mat of hair.

He groaned and pulled back, and for a moment she feared
he would leave her. But he yanked the shirt over his head then pressed his bare chest against her breasts, his lips returning to hers. Her naked flesh seemed bonded to his as if they were human magnets, as if they were one person sharing the same body.

If their lovemaking went no further, she thought
, she would feel fulfilled.

But it would go further. Neither of them could stop now, not if the whole world dis
solved around them. Maybe it already had. She had no way of knowing. He consumed her. Nothing else existed beyond the two of them.

His mouth and tongue devoured her throat, her shoulders, her breasts, claiming all of her for his own. She
belonged to him, only to him, always to him.

Her hands roamed over his body, touching, possessing.

As his tongue flicked across a nipple, sending unimagined ecstasy darting through her body, her head rolled back on the pillow, and she heard a moan coming from her own throat.

His impatient fingers darted beneath the elastic of her pant
ies and caressed her stomach, electrifying every inch of skin he touched. She lifted her hips to help him strip away the barrier that separated them.

He stood then, his gaze never leaving hers, removed and thrust aside the rest of his clothing, the last obstacle remaining between them. She started to look away as Elizabeth had looked away from Shawn, denying her desire to capture his body in her vision, afraid to indulge so boldly.

But tonight she didn’t look away. She watched his dark silhouette, let her eyes trace his wide chest, the darker shadow of hair tapering to his flat stomach...down to his blatant arousal.

Then he was beside her again, holding her again, and she could only see him with her fingertips.

His hungry mouth darted over her, kissing her throat, flicking a nipple, caressing her stomach. Flames enveloped her, and she couldn’t tell if the heat came from inside her or him. But whatever the source, it flared, scorching her. She writhed beneath him, unable to endure the separation one minute longer.

As if in an oft-rehearsed dance, he rolled over her,
between her thighs, and at last she felt him inside her. She arched upward, meeting him, pulled away and rose again, their frenetic rhythm perfectly synchronized.

She closed her eyes, shutting out every sense but feeling, then opened them again as she felt his gaze on her. She
understood that he needed to watch her, needed her to watch him, to join their gazes, their souls, as their bodies joined.

Waves of fire that centered in her loins blazed through her, higher and hotter with every movement. She
could no longer tell if he was inside her or she was inside him, but she knew they were together, merged and moving as one.

She felt him throb
as they exploded together. One or both of them cried out, or maybe it only sounded in her mind.

He collapsed atop her, kissed her neck gently, his lips warm and soft,
then rolled beside her, taking himself from her. But it didn’t matter. Their hearts would be one always even if their bodies never joined again. She curled bonelessly into his warmth. His chest expanded and contracted against her breasts in perfect rhythm with her own breathing.

He wrapped his arms about her, his big hands stroking
languorously down her back. She wanted to touch him that same way, to explore and memorize at leisure every inch of him. But she was drained of energy, limp from giving and taking so much. Her eyes closed, and she drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Dylan held Analise’s warm body against his, stroked her silky, sweat-damp skin, inhaled her scent of wildflowers now mingled with the musky odors of love, listened as her rapid breathing softened, became slow and even, as her hands on his back relaxed. She was asleep.

If only he could hold her like this forever with no intr
usions from the outside world. Even as the thought ran through his head, a chill seemed to creep through the room, across their bodies. They couldn’t close out the rest of the world. It would have to be dealt with, especially after she regained her memory.

When that happened, would she ever lie in his arms like this again?

Would he want her to?

No, that last question was stupid. Of course, he
’d want her. He’d wanted her from the first minute he’d looked into those green eyes, as deep and clear as the ocean.

Maybe she
’d never remember. Could they start from right here, right now?

Again the answer was
no
. It didn’t matter if she never remembered. He remembered. He couldn’t forget Tom or his father or his mother’s tormented face which had aged twenty years and no longer smiled. People were wrong when they said the past was dead. The present was only an accumulation of all of the past.

Analise
had sensed that so strongly she’d tried to go back to the past, to escape from the present, negate the part she couldn’t handle.

And he had to admit that the house where he lived, the old news stories in the library, even
Analise’s insane tales, gave him an eerie sensation of actually being there in the past. When Analise talked of their having been lovers in another lifetime, he more than half believed her.

He smiled into the dark, lifted her silvery hair and let it trickle through his fingers, savored the reality of her in this lifetime.

Well, her theory would explain why he’d been so immediately drawn to her even after her suspicious actions on Sunday and the even more suspicious loss of her memory on Monday morning, not to mention that mysterious set of bruises.

She must have figured out that he was Tom
’s brother.

Which meant, even if she w
asn’t directly involved, she must have always had the information and kept it a secret. So what did that say about her? And where did the bruises come in? Had she wanted to tell him and Phillip had beaten her to keep her quiet?

But she was sticking to her story about falling down the stairs.

In her defense—and he desperately wanted to build her defense—it would appear the truth had finally become so painful, she’d been forced to lose the memory of it.

She mumbled something soft and incoherent against his chest, sighed and went on sleeping. He stroked her slen
der arm and resisted the urge to crush her closer to him, so close she’d become a part of him and they’d never have to split apart.

She moved sinuously against him, and he felt his desire for her returning. But he
couldn’t give in to it again. He needed to get up quietly, without disturbing her, get away from her presence long enough to think straight and try to sort out all the complications, decide what to do now. His feelings for her, feelings he finally had to admit went beyond physical attraction, complicated things immeasurably.

The house creaked, and
he tensed for a moment then reminded himself that old houses did that.

Analise awoke with a start. Had she heard a noise, a warning?

Then she relaxed. She didn
’t have to be afraid. Dylan was beside her, holding her. She still lay curled in his arms, her head on his chest.

But Shawn hadn
’t been able to keep Elizabeth safe.

Holding her breath, she listened for any sound.

Dylan nuzzled her hair. His hand stroked down her back, slid along the valley of her waist and over her hip. She raised her face to his, felt his lips descend to hers. This time his kiss was teasing. Gently he nipped her upper lip, touched her lower with the tip of his tongue, explored and tasted fully.

He slid one hand between them, caressing her breast
almost worshipfully. Against her stomach she could feel his desire growing even as her own rose again.

With their earlier desperation satisfied, they could indulge in slow, velvety explorations, savoring every nuance of every sensation. Finally, when she thought surely she must explode with the unbearable pressure even his gentle touches evoked, he slid into her.

Like classical music, he led her slowly, then faster and faster, building to a crescendo, from one peak to another and another and another until she was certain she had reached the outer limits of exhaustion. But then, as she felt him racing to his own pinnacle, as she felt him throbbing inside her, to her surprise she joined him, ascending to heights she hadn’t known existed.

Later, as they lay in the darkness, she touched his face with her fingertips, traced his brows, his square,
determined jawline, the tiny scar at the corner of one eye. She wanted to know, to claim, every inch of him.

She loved him. She
’d loved him through two lifetimes, and no matter how perilous it might be, she couldn’t stop loving him. Maybe she’d returned to make peace with Phillip, to give him a chance to make things right. Maybe loving Dylan was wrong, even dangerous. But she was as powerless to resist this feeling as Elizabeth had been.

Even if she went back
to Phillip, if she never saw Dylan again in this life, she’d still love him. Elizabeth knew that the night she ran away with Shawn, the night she died.

No.
Analise wouldn’t allow herself to think about that right now. For as long as it lasted, even if for only this one night, she wanted to revel in the glory of a consuming love that survived through the years, even beyond death.

She pressed herself as close to Dylan as possible and drifted again into sleep.

*~*~*

She was sinking. She flailed her arms wildly, but she couldn
’t swim, couldn’t rise back to the surface where air would fill her lungs instead of the invading, suffocating water. The weight was too much. She couldn’t fight it. She was being pulled deeper and deeper.

She could feel him watching her, see him as through a fog.

His eyes shone like beacons, guiding her, compelling her to climb upward. His mouth was moving, but she couldn’t hear the words, couldn’t hear any sound.

The effort to reach him was too great. She wanted to turn loose, give up,
sink into the dark oblivion.

But he wouldn
’t let her. His gaze pulled her, tugged, drew her like a magnet, and he was more irresistible than the force that drew her downward.

With an all-consuming effort,
Analise forced her eyes open. She couldn’t move, didn’t want to move. The quilt lay on her like a giant, leaden weight. A monster sat on her head, crushing it in viselike jaws. She gave up the fight to stay awake and closed her eyes, drifted again toward the devouring mist.

His stare was so strong as to be almost palpable. She tried to reach out a hand to touch him, but the mist was too
dense, the weight that covered her too heavy. She wanted so badly to stop struggling, but he wouldn’t let her.

S
he dragged her eyelids open once more, trying to see what he was pulling her toward.

Nothing.
Darkness still surrounded her. She started to close her eyes again, but she heard whispering...whispering that reverberated painfully inside her head.

The window
,
the whisper came. He was outside the window. If she could get over to it, then she could stop fighting, sink into the comfortable fog and let go.

With a giant effort, she tried to get out of bed, but her body was no longer hers, didn
’t respond to her commands.

Harder! She had to try harder. He wouldn
’t stop until she made it to the window.

Moaning with the exertion, summoning all her strength, she struggled to move. He seemed to be reaching to her,
offering his strength, the energy that always hummed about him.

Slowly she slid out of bed. Her aching head whirled round and round. Her stomach lurched, and she toppled in a heap on the floor.

No longer sure why, she dragged herself slowly across the floor toward the window. The distance seemed infinite, every inch an agony. She didn’t look up, had no real desire to see her goal, just kept pushing mindlessly forward until her hand touched the wall.

She reached the window. She could stop.

But it wasn’t enough. She had to pull herself up. Groaning with the exertion, hanging onto the windowsill, she finally managed to haul her leaden, disconnected body from the floor, up to the translucent square of glass.

She swayed precariously, her head and stomach spinning.

She could barely discern that the darkness was less intense beyond the glass, outside her room. She thought she could see his shadowy silhouette in the other window. She could still feel him all about her, pushing, urging. She had to get to him and make him stop, make him let her go back into the depths.

She leaned forward, but she couldn
’t reach him. Weakly, again and again, she hammered against the restraining sheet of glass, the action becoming meaningless with so many repetitions. Then, as if in slow motion, her fists kept going, through the window, into the lighter world outside. Shards of glass sailed away, a few falling onto the sill and the floor beside her.

Air rushed through
, crisp and bright and sweet. Of their own volition, her lungs sucked it in greedily. She coughed, swayed closer, wanting more, leaning out of the hole until a spear of glass scratched her cheek, warning her back.

As she breathed in the light from the approaching dawn, she seemed to breathe out the darkness from her room, from her brain.

Gradually, breath by breath, Analise became aware that she was standing at her bedroom window. Her head throbbed painfully, and her stomach churned with nausea. She’d been having the strangest dream...the drowning sensation again, only this time it was different. And this time she’d had the oddest sensation of Dylan being there.

She broke into another fit of coughing then gulped in more of the fresh, cool air
...air that came through her broken window! She lifted her hand in front of her face, saw the blood oozing from several cuts.

She
’d been walking—no, crawling—in her sleep and had broken her window.

With a gasp she turned back into the room
and smelled the sickly sweet, rotten odor of gas. For a long moment she stood, panic gripping her still-drugged mind.

Gas
. It had to be coming from the space heater. Heart hammering wildly, she stumbled on shaky legs over to the stove, groped for the pliers she kept behind it and twisted the difficult handle, shutting off the flow.

She clutched her aching head with both hands, trying to think through the fu
zz that clouded her mind. All she could remember was an admonition from somebody, somewhere—should she ever smell gas, get out of the house immediately.

She started toward the door acr
oss the room then stopped. If she opened the door and released the gas into the rest of the house, would it find a spark somewhere and explode?

She staggered across the room and opened both windows on the back wall of the house then took several deep, steadying breaths. The nausea and headache were gradually diminishing.

The jagged hole beckoned her over to survey the damage. Through the window she could see Dylan’s house. He’d been an integral part of her gas-induced hallucination. She’d struggled to reach the window because of him, because she’d thought he was watching her, calling to her.

With a start, she remembered the night before. She whirled and looked at the empty bed. Dylan had been there with her. They
’d made love. She’d gone to sleep in his arms. So where was he now?

Had he seemed to be watching her in her delusions
because he really had been? Had he turned on the gas then stayed long enough to be sure she wouldn’t wake up too soon?

But in her dream he
’d seemed to be pulling her out of it, sending her the will to survive.

Dylan
’s form appeared in the window across the way just as she’d imagined it earlier...or actually seen it earlier? His eyes widened with surprise when he saw her. He blinked then disappeared from view.

Was he surprised she was still alive? Was he coming after her to finish the job? She grabbed a robe
and slid out the door, opening it as little as possible and closing it quickly behind her. Pulling on the robe, she raced downstairs and out the front door. She was not going to be a victim. She would confront him.

Dylan, wearing a rumpled brown robe, was already charging across the yard toward her. She halted on her porch,
suddenly unsure of her bold decision, but he leaped up the steps and grabbed her arms before her groggy mind and body could run away.

“
What’s the matter?” he demanded, his dark eyes wide, his expression concerned. “Why is your window broken?”

“
Why did you leave in the middle of the night?” She tried to pull away from him, raised her hands to push him away, but he caught and held them.

“
What happened to your hands? Did you break your window? Damn it, Analise, what’s going on?”

“
How do you know I was the one who broke my window?” She jerked her hands from his grasp and hid them behind her back.

“
You were standing in front of a broken window, and you have scratches on your hands. What am I supposed to think?”

She moved away from him, around the
porch swing, put it between the two of them. “Did you turn on the gas before you left me?” She hadn’t meant to ask him so bluntly, but the words slipped out.

“
Turn on the gas?” he exclaimed. “Someone turned on the gas? That’s why you broke the window?”

She nodded, her insides clenching into knots, the nausea returning full force, her headache rampaging as she waited for him to do or say something that would betray his guilt.

He stood erect, looking into the distance as though searching for answers. “Someone turned on the gas,” he repeated—stupidly, she thought.

“
I almost died,” she said, and he flinched. “If you didn’t do it, who did? Nobody was in my house except you and me, and you left. Why did you leave?” Insanely, she wanted him to give her a reason, wanted him to prove to her he hadn’t tried to kill her after she’d opened her body and heart to him, given him her soul and thought he’d given her his.

He took a deep breath and faced her squarely, his eyes full of pain.
“I had to get some distance, be by myself to think. Last night...us...it was all too much.”

Her heart clenched into a painful knot.
“Too much what?”

“
Too much everything. Too much emotion, too much involvement with each other.” He raked a hand through his hair and shook his head. “You just don’t understand.”

“
I know that. So why don’t you tell me instead of talking in riddles?” She fought the urge to dissolve into tears. How could their lovemaking mean so much to her and so little to him?

Again he shook his head.
“You can’t really believe I’d hurt you after last night. Why would I want to hurt you?”

“
I don’t know,” she almost sobbed, banging her fists on the back of the swing. “I don’t know why someone would push me down the stairs or turn on the gas. If I can’t remember my life, how would I know why someone wants me dead?”

His eyes and nostrils flared, and she realized she had spoken her suspicions aloud for the first time.
“What makes you think someone pushed you downstairs?” he asked softly.

She didn
’t want to tell him about the dream or the lamp shard. “Why did you come to your window and look over at me?” she demanded instead. “Because you heard glass shattering and wanted to see if I had somehow managed to survive?”

He glared at her.
“No,” he said, and she snatched the word from the air, held it to her, cherished it. He had finally denied that he’d tried to kill her. She had no reason to believe him, of course, only that her heart wanted to.

“
I was having this stupid dream,” he continued. “You were drowning, and I was trying to help you.” He shrugged and shook his head. “The noise of glass shattering woke me up. I guess because I was dreaming about you, I associated the noise with you. I thought you were in danger, and you were. I went to my window and there you stood, behind that broken glass.”

It sounded amazingly similar to
her own dream or hallucination. He’d been with her either in her dream or in her room. If he’d turned on the gas, he could have made up the dream to coincide with her reactions to the gas.

She wanted to believe him, to trust him. Maybe he was telling the truth about his dream. Maybe his soul had somehow reached out to help her. If she was going to believe their love had transcended death, it was a small leap to believe in mental telepathy.

He rubbed a hand across his face. “When I left, I made sure to lock your door behind me.”

“
It was still locked when I came down,” she said accusingly. “No one else could have come in.”

“
Analise, we’ve talked about this before. A child with a library card could slip through that lock.”

“
But why would anyone want to kill me?” She spread her arms wide, almost screaming in her frustration and pain.

“
Why would I want to kill you?” he asked quietly, his gaze tugging at her as it had seemed to tug in her dream. “Maybe nobody did. Maybe it was an accident. You got cold after I left, lit the heater, and it went out.”

Her heart surged with hope at the possible explanation, but she had to crush it.
“The heater’s very hard to light. I have to use a pair of pliers to turn the handle. I’d have remembered.” Even as she spoke, she questioned herself. Would she have remembered? Hadn’t she forgotten a lot of things lately?

“
Then let’s call the police.” Dylan stood there, sturdy and real, his words cutting harshly and cleanly through the last fuzziness in her brain, making real the possibility that someone was trying to murder her.

She wrapped her arms about herself against the chill air, rubbing the soft fabric of her robe. She couldn
’t say why, but the idea of calling the police filled her with foreboding, despair, guilt.

“
You’re cold. Let’s go inside and talk about this over some hot coffee,” he suggested. “I’ll go upstairs and check out your bedroom to make sure it’s safe.”

Make sure to remove his fingerprints before she took his suggestion and called the police?

She had to stop this. She could have turned on the heater herself.

But she hadn
’t imagined the shard of glass on the stairs.

Unless it had been the
re all along and she’d manufactured the dream around it.

She passed a shaky hand across her face and
nodded, agreeing to everything, to anything. Right now she felt more confused than when she’d first awakened to see a stranger in the mirror.

“
Wait here.” He disappeared inside the house.

She didn
’t wait, following him instead. She tried to tell herself she wanted to stay close to him because she didn’t trust him. She needed to see what he’d do when he got to her bedroom. But she couldn’t deny that a part of her simply wanted to be with him, wanted him to touch her and hold her again, make love to her, make all the pain and uncertainty go away.

He paused in the foyer and turned to her.
“This could be dangerous. You really ought to wait outside.”

She shook her head, wondering if the danger he spoke of would be to her body or to her heart.