Still Lake (12 page)

“She's missing.” It was bad enough that she was standing in his house in the middle of the night in her nightgown. Somehow the darkness made it worse. Not that she wanted bright lights to expose what she was wearing. Though in fact the nightgown had more fabric in it than some of her dresses. She was being stupid. “Why are you prowling around here in the dark?” she demanded.

“It's my house, I can prowl around all I want. In fact, the power's out. I was just calling the electric company.”

“You told me your phone didn't work.”

“It didn't work yesterday. They hooked it up today. Why don't you call your house and see if your mother's there?”

“She won't answer the phone.”

“Your sister will. That way you'll know whether you really need to panic or not.”

“All right,” she said grudgingly. He sounded too damned practical for her, and she wanted to get away from him as fast as she could, but if Grace was missing she needed to get help quickly. “Where's the phone?”

“Over by the sofa. You'll have to feel your way there—I don't have a flashlight or candles.”

“I do,” she said, remembering it belatedly, and she switched it on, shining it on Smith.

Big mistake. He was wearing a pair of ragged cutoff jeans and nothing else. There seemed to be acres and acres of naked, tanned, warm male skin right in front of her, and she dropped the flashlight, which immediately went out, plunging them back into darkness again.

“Smart move,” he drawled. “Did you see a ghost?”

There it was again. “I don't believe in ghosts,” she said.

“Given the history of this place that's probably just as well,” he muttered. “Give me your hand.”

“Why?”

“I said your hand, not any other part,” he said, annoyed. “I'm going to lead you over to the telephone, preferably without you breaking your neck in the process.”

“I think I should just go back…”

He'd already grabbed her hand. He could see better than she could in the darkness, and she had no chance to pull away. His hand was big, strong, warm. Flesh. He moved past her into the pitch-black room. The doorway was empty. She could yank her hand free and run for it if she could just take him by surprise.

“Don't think you can run away,” he said, tugging at her. “I won't be responsible for you getting lost in the woods any more than I would for your mother. I have at least a faint sense of decency. Come on.”

She didn't bother struggling—it would have been undignified, and her tattered dignity was her only defense by that point. She let him lead her through the darkness, and she only banged her hip once against a wooden object before he placed her hand on the telephone. “There,” he said, sounding impatient.

The impatience was both reassuring and annoying. He didn't want her there any more than she wanted to be there—he'd made that entirely clear. He just had a sense of responsibility beneath his remote exterior.

It was an old-fashioned dial phone, probably black and ancient. Touch-tone would have been hard enough in the dark. By the fifth attempt she could hear the phone ringing on the other end, and she
only hoped to God that she'd dialed the right number and not some frosty Vermonter.

She let it ring. Her eyes were just beginning to get used to the darkness, and she could tell that Smith's body was once again blocking her escape route. Why did he have to be so damned big? So damned
there?
So damned naked? It was a cool night—he should be sleeping in pajamas like any sensible man, not in skimpy little cutoffs….

“Yeah? What is it?” Marty's sleepy voice finally answered the phone.

“Grace has disappeared. I've been looking everywhere for her—would you check her room and see if by any chance she's come back in? I'd hate to call the police for nothing.”

“All right.” She sounded martyred, as always, and Sophie clutched the phone tightly as she listened to Marty's footsteps shuffle away.

It seemed to take her forever. When she finally got back on the phone she'd gone beyond begrudging to outright annoyed. “She's sound asleep in her bed, Sophie.”

“Are you sure? I heard the door close and…”

“I'm sure. You must have been dreaming. Where the hell are you, anyway?”

“I'm at the Whitten place. I thought she might have come back here….”

“The Whitten place? O-kay.” There was no
doubt Marty knew exactly who she was with. “Don't wake me up when you get back home.”

“It'll only take a couple of minutes. You'll still be awake.”

Marty's laugh was far from comforting. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. Have fun, sis. Don't do anything I wouldn't do.”

“Marty…” But Marty had already hung up the phone—leaving Sophie with no choice but to hang up the other end and somehow figure out a way to get by her unwilling host without him touching her again.

He wasn't there. He'd disappeared while she was talking to Marty, obviously having lost interest in her. Again one of those moments of regret-tinged relief. At least he wouldn't interfere with her leaving.

She headed straight for the door, bumping into two more objects and almost knocking down a table in her haste. “Thanks for letting me use the phone,” she called out into the darkness as she pushed open the screen door.

“Anytime,” he said from the porch. “Now, why don't you tell me why you really came here.”

S
he should have known she couldn't escape that easily, Sophie thought. Not the way her luck had been running. He was standing on the porch, leaning against the railing, and the moon had come out again, sending a silvery light over the landscape, a shimmering trail on the mirror-still lake. He was even better-looking in the moonlight, she thought irritably. Why couldn't life ever be simple?

She pushed open the screen door, letting it slam behind her as she stepped out onto the porch. Into the night. “I told you why I came here,” she said patiently. “I was looking for my mother.”

“Who was sound asleep in bed.”

“It was a logical assumption. She was here the other night,” Sophie protested. “I thought I heard the outside door closing, and when I went down to check on her, her room was empty.”

“Did you think to check the bathroom?”

“No,” she muttered. “That was probably where she was. She gets up several times during the night.”

“Too much information,” he drawled. “So why
the panic tonight? It would have taken only a moment to see if your mother had wandered off, and presumably no one could have gotten in without jimmying the door. You do lock the doors, don't you?”

“Do you think I'm some kind of idiot?” she demanded huffily.

Wrong question. “Yes. What kind of lock do you have?”

“Whatever came with the house.”

“Jesus Christ, woman, don't you have any sense at all?” he exploded. “The first thing you should have done was have the locks upgraded on the place. Three women alone out here at the end of the lake, with no one around…”

“You're around,” she pointed out.

“I just got here. And you trust me about as far as you'd trust Jack the Ripper. Don't you have any sense of self-preservation?” He sounded really annoyed with her.

“The crime rate around Colby is very low,” she said in a haughty voice.

“This year, maybe,” he muttered. “Get new locks for the doors. It won't keep anyone out who's really determined, but it could slow them down.”

“Why would someone want to break in?”

“People do all sorts of strange things. Maybe someone's developed a mad passion for you.”

“Thanks a lot,” she said wryly. “The notion is not
that
strange.”

She couldn't see his expression in the shadows. The moon was behind him, silvering him with an almost eerie light. He had bony shoulders. She liked bony shoulders. Oh, God, she liked him, she realized with sudden horror. Not his personality or his presence or anything about him. Except his body. And his mouth.

Why the hell was she reacting like this to the most disturbing man she'd ever met? At this time in her life?

She didn't show a glimmer of what was racing through her mind. “I better get home,” she said after a moment.

He was watching her. He leaned against the porch, lazily, as if he hadn't a care in the world except to bait her. Maybe it was only her crazy emotions, roiling around beneath her determinedly calm exterior, or maybe he was just as tense as she was despite his negligent pose. She couldn't tell what was going on under his enigmatic exterior.

“Yeah,” he said, not moving. For her to leave, he'd have to move out of the way. But he showed no signs of moving. “Tell me something. What the hell are you wearing?”

Presumably he couldn't see the blush that warmed her face. She pulled the shawl more tightly around her shoulders. It was a warm night for late August,
she was wearing a voluminous Edwardian nightgown, and he was making her feel naked.

“It's a nightgown. Haven't you ever seen one before? I would have thought a man of your vast experience would have seen women in nightgowns before.” Shit. In her effort to be arch and cool she'd inadvertently brought up the subject of sex. Obliquely, but it was there, between them, and she didn't want to talk about sex with John Smith or whoever the hell he was.

The slight curve of his mouth, his very sexy mouth, was his only reaction. It was enough. “I have to admit that most women I sleep with are naked. They certainly don't wear things like that. You look like a doomed bride. All you need is a bouquet of dead flowers and a tattered veil and you could haunt this place quite nicely.”

Ghosts weren't any improvement over sex as subject matter. Not when she had to walk by what had once been a murder scene.

“It's a nightgown, and I'll have you know it came from Victoria's Secret!”

“Not the Victoria's Secret I know. Trust you to consider that sexy.”

“I don't consider it sexy!” she protested.

“Then why are you wearing it?”

“Because I don't care about sex.”
Shit
. He'd trapped her into it. And in fact, it was a lie. She hadn't cared about it before. All he'd had to do was
kiss her, and she couldn't stop thinking about it. And why the hell didn't he put on more clothes—his chest, his stomach, everything about him was distracting her, making her think about things she didn't want to even consider.

He pushed away from the post, and she thought he was going to let her leave. She was wrong. He came right up to her, and there was no place for her to retreat. The screen door was pressed against her back, and he was blocking her way with his body. His moonstruck shoulders. His mouth.

“Oh, yeah?” he said mildly enough. He reached out and took the shawl in his hands, pulling it from her. She made a futile grab at it, but it was too late. He let it drop on the porch floor, at her bare feet beneath the ruffled nightgown. Then he began to unfasten the pearl button at her throat. She was having trouble breathing. “Prove it,” he whispered, unfastening the second button.

She finally looked up at him, stricken. “What are you doing?” she demanded in a strained voice.

“Seducing you.” He sounded remote, almost clinical, as his long fingers moved down the front of her nightgown, parting one button after another. It had too many buttons. “I would have thought a woman with your vast experience would have figured that out by now.”

“But…why?”

His low laugh was even more unnerving. “Because I want to.”

In another minute she was going to be naked in front of him, she realized dazedly. Why the hell hadn't he shown up ten years ago—twenty pounds ago? She was not going to get naked with a man who hadn't even told her his real name, who was nothing but hostile, who was looking at her out of hooded eyes that seemed filled with impossible desire, as the last button gave way beneath his deft fingers and the yards of white cotton fell to a heap at her feet.

At least it was dark. His eyes drifted down over her body, the ripe curves in the moonlight, and a dreamy expression crossed his face, just before he leaned forward and put his mouth against the side of her neck, tasting her hammering pulse.

She stood very still, like a doe caught in the headlights, hoping maybe he'd forget she was there and go away. But he held her wrists, and he was sliding his hands up her arms to hold her shoulders. He moved his mouth to the base of her throat, and she could feel his tongue.

That worried little moan of pleasure couldn't have come from her, could it? Maybe the loons were out on the lake, floating safely in the silver water. Maybe it was an owl….

He reached behind her and opened the screen door, pushing her back into the house with only the
lightest touch. “I'm not doing this,” she warned him.

“Sure you are. The only question is whether we're going to do it standing up, on the dining room table or make it all the way up to my bed.”

Her eyes widened in shock. They were back in the dark again, the moonlight barely making it in one window, and she should have felt less vulnerable. But his hands were still on her, and she couldn't even make another token protest. Not when he'd slid his arms around her waist, pulling her up against his hot, strong body, and he was kissing her. Slowly. Lazily. Thoroughly.

Skin against skin. His hard chest against her soft breasts. Her chilled flesh against his heat. Now she was shivering. Silly, she thought absently. It wasn't that cold. Why was she shivering?

He broke the kiss, swearing softly. “The hell with this,” he muttered, and she felt a sudden panic that he'd changed his mind, that he didn't want her. And then an even greater panic as he simply scooped her up and laid her down on the floor.

The carpet was scratchy beneath her back. And then it wasn't her back she was thinking about, as he leaned over her in the darkness and slid his hands down her shoulders to her breasts.

She opened her mouth to protest, but he filled it with his tongue, and for some reason she arched beneath him as his fingers touched her nipples with
the lightest, most unexpectedly erotic touches. And she wanted more.

Maybe if she closed her eyes here in the dark it would be accomplished as if by magic. She could finally get rid of her virginity, and then she could go on to find someone more suitable….

He put his mouth on one breast, sucking at it, and a stripe of hot pleasure speared down between her legs. He must have known, because he put his hand between her legs as his mouth pulled at her breast, his fingers sliding inside her, rubbing against her with a slow, deliberate rhythm that matched the tug of his mouth at her breast, and she couldn't speak, couldn't argue, couldn't make much more than a choked gasp that caught in her throat as a spasm of pleasure hit her body.

She knew what an orgasm was like—she was a modern woman who knew her own body. It was nothing like this. It was…

She stopped thinking coherently as her body convulsed beneath his relentless touch. He stopped then, but she had no words to argue, when she heard the unmistakable rasp of his zipper, the quick fumble of clothes, of paper tearing.

She surfaced long enough to realize he was using a condom, to realize he was back, kneeling between her legs, and she knew this was going to happen unless she said something. She couldn't remember how it had gotten to this point, so fast. The man was
certainly efficient. She only knew that if he stopped she'd die.

He stretched out over her body and kissed her, and for the first time she kissed him back. “Put your arms around me,” he said in a harsh voice, “and hold on.”

“I should tell you…” she began, obediently putting her arms around his neck.

“Just tell me whether you want to do this or not,” he said impatiently. “Yes or no?”

She wanted to shove him off her, but for some reason her arms were tight around his neck and her mouth was saying, “Yes.”

He slid his hands under her butt and she could feel him pressing against her, hot and hard and sleek. And then he thrust inside, deep, fast, burying himself inside her, breaking past whatever trace of innocence she still had remaining.

She let out a stifled yelp of pain. She'd forgotten that it would hurt. She'd even assumed her hymen was long gone. Apparently not.

He was frozen, buried deep within her body, and that nice, sensual haze that enveloped Sophie began to fade.

“Shit,” he muttered in her ear. Not the romantic uttering she would have imagined, and she felt him begin to pull away.

“No!” she said, clinging tightly to his neck. “Don't stop.”

“I wasn't going to.” He kissed her, and she thought she could taste regret on his mouth. “Shit,” he said again. And then he reached down and pulled her legs around him, so that he was deeper, further, harder.

He began to pull out of her, and she almost protested, but then he filled her again. “Don't worry,” he muttered, his voice thick with strain. “I know how to do this. I have lots of experience.”

Forget tender, romantic musings. It didn't matter. What mattered was the feel of him inside her, thick and heavy, the surge of his hips against hers, the feel of his beautiful bony shoulders beneath her hands. The heavy, glorious weight of him. The movement, deep and rocking. She wanted to wrap herself around him, dissolve into his skin, lose herself completely, if only for a short while.

Somewhere along the way her shivering had stopped, and she was covered with a film of sweat, slick, sliding against his hard body. The pain wasn't even a memory, and now she wanted this to last forever, soaring, sailing, faster, deeper, harder. She couldn't catch her breath, didn't want to, she just wanted him, more of him. Neverending. Relentless. Forever.

It started slow and hit her with the force of a sledgehammer, a cataclysm of such power she could only hold on to him and let it happen. He went rigid against her, rock hard in her arms, and he probably
muttered “oh, shit” again, but she was beyond hearing, lost in some mind-scattered cloud of inexpressible pleasure. She fell back, limp, awash in shimmering sensation, and she knew an odd, faint trace of regret that he'd used a condom. She'd wanted all of him inside her, a total giving, and he'd withheld something.

He collapsed on top of her, heavy, damp with sweat, his heart slamming against hers, his breath rasping in his chest. As the powerful sensations began to ebb, regret took their place. She hadn't seen him in the dark, hadn't touched him. She'd lost her virginity in the darkness to an experienced predator, in exchange for a moment of fleeting pleasure.