Something in the Water... (11 page)

“I’m getting ready to torture you,” she whispered now.

He was breathing hard, and his gaze had turned sharp and assessing, following her every movement. His fingers suddenly fisted and his darkly tanned arms strained, delineating muscles and making veins pop as he tested the bonds. Only now realizing that she’d been in earnest, a protesting sound came from between his lips.

Not that he meant it. “Well, come on then,” he muttered thickly, daring her.

She had to chuckle at that. After all, she, not he, had the upper hand. “Torture,” she whispered again, speaking each syllable succinctly. “That means that we don’t do what you want, Rex.”

His head was tilted back taking in the one remaining scarf in her hand. It was long, narrow and very bright red. “Really?” he said.

She nodded. “Really.”

“What do we do then, Ariel?”

“Whatever Ariel wants.”

He was thoroughly excited. His hips, straining. He could barely move, but he tried, and his legs spread just a fraction wider. His chin raised another notch, and his head moved from side to side on the pillow.

Standing at the foot of the bed, she looped the scarf around her neck and touched her breasts, lifting them for his eyes, gently squeezing, until his sudden intake of breath made her consider letting him watch her bring herself to climax. And why not? She could do absolutely anything…
anything
at all with this man tonight.

But she wanted to touch him. Capturing his feet in her hands, she massaged slowly and deeply, cupping her fingers tightly around the insteps, rubbing thumbs into the hollows, crunching fingers around his toes—all of which seemed to have an incredible effect on the man, but not nearly so much as when she leaned and drew a big toe between her lips and nibbled.

Sex charged the air then. Her hands rose, burning on his calves, her tongue languorously eating up every inch of him. Loose, ropelike circles of kisses looped, climbing his sensitized flesh, drawing guttural cries. Unbroken, the liquid trail hit his inner thighs, and his arms jerked, pulling the bonds taut, stretching them to breaking. His hips lifted then, as if in hopeless supplication…begging.

She was stunned by the tight muscles of his thighs as she slaked her thirst on the flesh there. Her hands molded his waist, her tongue bathing his lower belly, but circumventing where he most ached, toying instead with his navel, plundering wetly, then blowing the spot.

“Ariel,” he muttered harshly. “C’mon. That’s enough.”

She didn’t want to do anything nonconsensual, of
course. But when she glanced up into those glazed eyes, it didn’t look like enough to her. No, she decided, not nearly enough. “In just a minute,” she assured.

“Dammit,” he whispered hoarsely, his arms yanking, the scarves threatening to snap, even as his movements tightened her knots.

“What would you do to me if I let you loose?”

He was too frustrated to answer. But his eyes said he’d be on her like a wild animal. So, she supposed she could at least touch him there, just once. “Here,” she whispered, trailing a silk end of the remaining scarf over his legs.

At the softness of the touch, she thought he’d come undone. He went into spasms, his hips twisting as she masterfully twirled the watery fabric around his aroused length. Ever so slowly, she wrapped him like a present.

“Let me go,” he whispered.

“Should we tie a bow?” she asked innocently.

She tugged the scarf’s ends, as if to tie another knot, but only so he felt the pressure. “All right,” she whispered back, only pretending to understand. “I’ll let you go.” But she only removed the scarf. Leaning, she blew air kisses on his skin, until her mouth suddenly lowered, searing the flesh of his belly, then slowly working more magic from his navel up…up…

Gasping, he jerked his arms harder. This time, one broke free and he caught her upper arm with his hand. Fingers sank into her flesh as he hauled her on top of himself. His lips covered hers completely, his tongue seemingly mad for hers as he wrenched away from the one bond from which he’d managed to free himself.

He was rolling toward her, wanting her beneath him,
but she, herself, was about to shatter. Rustling hands over the covers, she fumbled for the condom, now lost somewhere in the sheets. Dammit, she had to find it. Relief flooded her when she did. More, when she slit the packet and studied the contents for a moment. She’d never done this before, but instinct took over and she smoothed the latex over him, then rolled it downward.

Just touching him there sent him reeling. She could tell he was about to explode. So was she. She’d been so lost, concentrating on teasing him, that she hadn’t even realized she was so far gone!

As she straddled him, everything else vanished. She needed him now. And she wasted no time, but sank onto him, moving fast, as his freed arm wrapped tightly around her back, clutching her to his chest. Gasping, she felt long-awaited relief claiming her. He was so hard, like steel. And so unbelievably hot. He split her, opening her completely, burning. Each inch promised the release she’d craved. It would come now; it had to.

He was an ocean, the pleasure endless, and she was lost to his currents. She rode them, then plunged, her hips shaking, thrusting. The world no longer existed. This wasn’t the house in which she’d grown up. Not the town she both loved and hated. There was no missing recipe book of mysterious teas that could kill a man, or make him love you, no more than she was to film a Harvest Festival. She had no job to do in a town called Bliss, and she’d never needed to prove herself to anyone.

Certainly, not to Rex Houston. She was wrapped so tightly in his arms that she didn’t know where she ended and he began…could only ride the waves, swept by the currents.

Suddenly, the dam burst; the wall crashed down. The crest was overwhelming. She didn’t even know this man, but tears welled in her eyes as she crumbled, the spasms shaking more than just her body. He’d reached something raw. So deep she’d never even known it was there….

A moment passed before she realized he’d come, too. And as he had, he’d broken his bonds. All but one of his feet had come free. A leg circled her, and like his arms, it drew her closer. They were still breathing hard, their bodies drenched with heat and sweat. “Ariel,” he muttered simply, his voice hoarse with emotion. “C’mere.”

Already, she was as close as she could get, but her arms clung more tightly around his neck; his arms wrapped around her back, and they shuddered together in the embrace. Her face buried in his neck, and one of his hands rose, cradling her head gently.

Her last thought was that nothing could ruin such bountiful perfection.

“You bitch.”

Startled, Ariel blinked, her eyes fluttering open. Had someone just called her a bitch? Her first thought was of Rex, but she realized he was beneath her, fast asleep. She was sprawled on top of him and he was starting to stir now….

It wouldn’t be one of her relatives. She’d never heard them curse. As she rolled away from him, she realized the room was freezing. The air conditioner had run all night. Because they’d been making love, she and Rex hadn’t noticed the artic chill. Which was why they’d covered up in a duvet and a blanket.

She glanced toward his face, registering that it was covered by a pillow, just as somebody grasped the covers and yanked, sweeping them away. The room was freezing! Chill bumps rose on her skin and she gasped when a female voice shrieked, “Get up, you son of a bitch!”

“Joanie?” she managed to say. Why was Joanie Underwood here? She looked fit to kill, too. Everything about her was cut out in sharp angles. She was wearing a boxy Chinese-style jacket over jeans and her black hair hung to her shoulders in a razor-cut bob.

“Get up, Howard,” she commanded.

Joanie Underwood was the only person in Bliss who called Studs by his real name. Under other circumstances, hearing her do so would have been funny, since Studs really had grown up to look more like a Howard than a Studs, after all. As it was, though, Ariel could only stare. “Joanie,” she said simply, in protest.

Rex was pushing the pillow away, struggling to sit, but he’d just discovered one ankle was still tied to the bedpost. One look at the bed left little to the imagination. Judging from the murderous trek of her gaze, Joanie had become a lot less interested in whatever man she’d uncovered than in the trail of clothes on the floor and the silk scarves littering the bed. Even the fitted sheet had come untucked, its elastic underside now visible atop a corner of the mattress. Ariel scrambled, grabbing a handful of the bedspread and pulling it toward her chest. By the time she’d wrapped it around herself and tossed a sheet toward Rex, Joanie’s gaze had returned to them.

“Who are you?” she demanded of Rex, clearly surprised to find a man other than her husband in bed with Ariel.

Rex’s voice was thick with sex and sleep. “I could ask the same of you, lady.”

“And to think I thought you might have changed,” Joanie said, staring at Ariel. “I even waved at you as I was leaving the hardware store!” She looked at Rex. “You must be one of her out-of-town friends.”

What right did Joanie have to barge in like this, much less to ask who Rex was? It didn’t help that the door between the rooms was open—Ariel had made a trip there in the night to get the scarves. And since her closet door
was open, Joanie was getting a view of the wild outfits strewn about.

“How did you get in here?” Ariel snapped.

“The door,” Joanie retorted.

Hadn’t she locked it? Or, no…that’s right. Ariel had locked her own, but only shut Rex’s. She’d been so excited, watching him head for the bathroom, that she hadn’t been thinking clearly. Damn. How could any of this be happening? Yesterday, she’d been so focused on what she needed to do here. Now, her plans were ruined. Joanie would tell everyone in town she’d come here looking for Studs and found Ariel in bed with Rex, whom others would identify, soon enough, as being from the CDC.

“Didn’t anyone ever teach you to knock?” Ariel ground out, deciding Joanie hadn’t changed a bit from the years she and her cheerleader girlfriends had shut Ariel out. If the truth be told, they’d done so long before Studs had ever started messing with her. Ariel had never known why, except that she’d had to carry the legacy of her husband-less relatives, not to mention Matilda.

Rex had covered his lap and he was reaching toward the foot of the bed, trying to unknot his ankle. He looked luscious, too, and she suddenly hated him for it. If he hadn’t been so good-looking, she’d never have given in to temptation, wound up in bed with him, nor been confronted by Joanie this morning. She’d have been found alone in bed, and Joanie would have had no new gossip to spread around Bliss. Even worse, this time the gossip was true. Ariel really had picked up a stranger.

She glanced at him. His shoulders and chest were the color of dark chestnuts shining under sunlight, and a
tangle of hair she knew to be as soft as spring rain ran between his pectorals like a blond river. Darker blond whiskers roughened his strong jaw, making him look rangy and dangerous.

Joanie had planted her manicured hands furiously on her hips, stabbing her own skin with the squarish opal-colored nails. Her lips were pursed tightly, while the nostrils of her straight nose flared as if she’d smelled something foul.

“I should have known,” she muttered, shifting her gaze to Ariel. “It’s not even him.” The woman was shaking with rage, from head to foot, and the controlled sound of her voice was probably the most frightening thing about her, since she was hovering on the edge of violence. Ariel could only pray her relatives or a guest didn’t hear her.

“Keep your voice down,” Ariel urged.

“Where is he?” Joanie demanded, looking around, clearly not intending to go anywhere.

“What?” Ariel managed to say, annoyance coursing through her as she followed the other woman’s gaze. Joanie was looking around, as if she expected to see her husband come from the bathroom or leap out of the armoire.

As Ariel forced herself to get up, she said, “Do you really think I’m entertaining two men up here?”

“I know damn well you are,” Joanie charged, her flashing eyes piercing Ariel’s. “So does everybody in Bliss. The news of how you were skinny-dipping with him yesterday at Panty Point is all over town. He went back to his office dripping wet.”

Ariel knew defending herself was useless, but she de
cided to try for once. “He wouldn’t leave me alone, and I pushed him into the spring.”

Joanie rolled her eyes. “We all know what you are.”

What you are.
The words reverberated, feeling like slices of a knife. “He’s not here,” she ground out. “He’s never been here.”

She wouldn’t have let Studs Underwood in the door, unless it was to question suspects about the missing recipe book, and he hadn’t even done that. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have let his boot heel defile the floor of the place she called home. More than anything, she’d never wanted her relatives to know the extent to which she’d been ostracized. And yet, even though that had been her choice, she’d resented their lack of intervention, too. Because deep down, she guessed she really hadn’t thought they would know how to help. They were so naive. So schoolmarmish.

The few incidents she’d mentioned, they’d pushed aside, as if to say they were inconsequential. Besides, they’d always thought her so perfect. They couldn’t imagine anyone mistreating the girl they loved so much. They’d just thought her a loner, the same as them, and had assumed she’d loved her chosen freedoms—the hours of riding and drawing. And, well, of course she had.

And anyway, what would they have been able to do? Sell Matilda’s house, pack up and leave their home of so many generations, just to get her out of Bliss? Fat chance.

Joanie was glaring at her. “When did he leave?”

“He was never here.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“He wasn’t here,” Ariel repeated.

“We both know he was.”

There was something lethal in Rex’s voice that got Joanie’s attention. “You’re the sheriff’s wife. Is that right?”

She drew herself up to full height. “I am.”

“Your husband’s not here. He hasn’t been here. He’s never going to be here.” He eyed Joanie a long moment, then added, “If he lays a hand on Ariel, I’d probably kill him. Now, get out, lady. You’re ruining my morning.”

“Oh,” Joanie said lightly. “I can see that. It looks as if you two have been having a grand old time. Just the kind Ariel has always shown the boys.”

Thankfully, Rex heeded Ariel’s warning glance. She wouldn’t have a man defending her. She didn’t need that. Still, when Joanie leaned and lifted the scarf that had been tied to his ankle, it was tempting to give Rex the go-ahead.

Staring down at the scarf, Joanie rubbed it between her fingers and thumb, then she let it drop as if it were something dirty. With that one gesture, she seemed to sully everything Ariel had shared with Rex the night before, but Ariel continued to bite her tongue, knowing that what the other woman wanted most was for Ariel to become hurt and defensive.

Slowly turning, she sent Ariel a pointed parting glance over her shoulder, as if to say the scarf had said it all.

Ariel felt emptied out inside, and worse, when her eyes trailed Joanie’s retreating form to the door, she saw Great-gran, Gran and her mom huddled in the doorway, standing so close together that they might have been one person, all wearing white aprons over uncharacteristically bright floral-print dresses. Before Ariel could contemplate that, they separated, just long enough to let Joanie pass, then huddled back together like a football team after a particularly difficult play.

“We heard a ruckus,” Gran said weakly when Joanie was gone, her hair in disarray, as if she’d come running fast. She was pressing one hand to her heart worriedly and, in the other, she held a wooden spoon splattered with pancake batter.

Great-gran nodded, and Ariel’s heart wrenched. She was the spitting image of Gran, a petite woman with wrinkled skin and a ramrod-straight posture, except that with greater age, she’d shrunk, becoming even shorter. She was wielding a spatula. Probably, they were still cooking breakfast. She’d grabbed a broom for good measure. “Why, Ariel, we thought maybe some of the guests were having a fight,” she offered, her china-blue eyes widening as they focused past Ariel’s shoulder.

“We thought some sort of domestic violence might be happening,” added Gran with concern, speaking the phrase
domestic violence
as if she’d only known that to exist on other planets before today, certainly not in her home.

Ariel’s mother’s eyes were also fixed on the great beyond, and Ariel was hardly going to turn around. She just hoped Rex had pulled the covers over more of himself than the square of lap he’d covered for Joanie.

“Are you all right?” her mother asked.

She managed a nod, her eyes skating to a dot behind her mother’s head, avoiding her gaze. The witches of Terror House had never been forthcoming with regard to personal relations, especially not when the questions involved intimate relations with men. And if they had been, Ariel suddenly fumed, then finding her sexual self would have been much easier. She’d have come into her own sooner in life and without so much unnecessary pain. Maybe, like Joanie, she’d have been married years ago
and had kids. She wouldn’t have felt so much career pressure, to succeed and prove herself. Oh, she wasn’t given to blaming others. She believed in taking personal responsibility, and she always would. She even owned up to her worst choices. In, fact, she
especially
owned up to her mistakes. But in this one area…

All the fantasies she’d had twenty-four hours ago about dating her boss, Ryan, dislodged from her mind entirely. They seemed silly and juvenile compared to what she’d experienced with Rex last night and the complexities of her past in Bliss.

“Please,” she suddenly muttered, speaking with uncharacteristic anger. “Can everybody just please leave?” When her relatives actually looked at Rex, as if she’d meant him, she clarified, “You.”

Shock and hurt appeared on their faces, and suddenly, Ariel was seized by another bout of pique. She was tired of the lies and secrets she associated with this place. As far as she was concerned, everybody in Bliss except her needed to have their heads examined. She couldn’t get back to Pittsburgh fast enough.

Yes, that’s what she needed, a gritty steel town without illusions. Everybody lied here, whether it was Studs, who kept pretending she was in love with him, or the women she’d lived with all her life, or Joanie who had always lied to herself about the true nature of her husband’s character.

“Of course we can leave,” her mother said tightly. “We were just concerned. We overheard Joanie Underwood say something about you having affair with her husband, and…”

Ariel’s lips parted. “You believed it?”

Great-gran wrung her hands. “Well, we didn’t think so.”

“But,” Gran quickly said, “you’re entitled to your secrets. We all are.”

Spoken like a true widow of Bliss. Ariel supposed they were referring, too, to her secrets about the man who was still in bed. “Oh, yes,” she couldn’t help but say, teetering on the edge of reason. “We are entitled to them, aren’t we?”

“Ariel,” her mother said in warning.

Everyone knew what she’d meant. So, why not say it? The last fifteen minutes thoroughly encapsulated everything that was wrong with her life. Studs had attacked her yesterday, and last night had been everything she’d always dreamed of with a man….

Quickly, she pushed aside the thoughts. Because that sweet chapter had passed swiftly enough into history, hadn’t it? The next thing she knew, Joanie Underwood, who’d snubbed her in school and had always called her names from the back of the school bus, was hulking over her and Rex, turning their lovemaking into something vile. Why had Ariel thought she could come back here and change anything?

Her eyes were still on her mother’s. “I don’t even know who my dad is,” she muttered. “After all these years.”

Her mother looked stunned. “I…didn’t know you still wondered. You quit asking so long ago…”

She quit asking because no one would tell her anything and because sheer survival in high school had overtaken her energies. Was her mother joking? “He’s my father,” she said, her eyes challenging the woman she loved most in the world. “Of course I wanted to know.”

“We can talk,” her mother said levelly. “Any time.”

Like always, it was as if years were stripped away whenever that stranger was referenced. Her mother’s pain was obvious. It was one reason Ariel had never asked to divulge more. She also suspected that her own fantasies about the mystery man might sustain her better than whatever grim reality was there to be discovered. Whoever Ariel’s father was, Samantha Anderson had loved him, and the man left her. Most of Ariel’s life, that information had been enough. Who wanted to care about someone who abandoned those who loved him? Who wanted to chase after a phantom, like a fool?