Tempest in Eden (9 page)

"Your accusations were well-founded that morning after I hit you with the tennis ball. Accidentally, I hasten to add." His lips separated into a wide grin before he grew serious again. "When you accused me of enjoying touching you, you were right. I enjoyed touching you, holding you, far too much. That's why I got angry. I didn't want to admit to myself, much less to you, how holding you affected me."

"Stop," she gasped and catapulted out of her chair. "Please don't say any more." Propping herself on rigid arms, she leaned into the countertop and rested her forehead on the cabinet door. Where weeks ago she would have found this scene highly amusing and would have teased him unmercifully, now she only wanted to stop him before he said more.

She wasn't the same woman who had caught him stepping out of the shower. Something had happened to her. She hadn't been able to attach a name to it. She didn't know how to handle it.

He stood up and placed his hands on her shoulders. His touch ignited her senses, she moaned softly. "I have to tell you, don't you see? My only salvation lies in being honest about what I feel." He took a step closer. The hard strength of his body made her feel comparably weak. "Shay, that dream I was having that morning we … we woke up together, that was a dream I didn't want to end."

With gentle pressure on her shoulders, he turned her around to face him. Forcing her chin up with his index finger, he made her meet his eyes. His hands closed around her face. Lightly, tenderly, his thumb glided over her lips. "I didn't want it to end," he whispered.

That wonderful mouth melted onto hers, and she felt that she had come home after spending months away. For the first time in years, no, in her life, she felt whole.

His mouth slanted across hers, persuasively parting her lips. His tongue paused, hovering on the brink of great discovery before it slipped between her lips to sample the sweetness of her mouth.

She heard her own moan of pleasure echo his as her arms came around his neck. He moved closer, pressing her body between his and the countertop, both equally unyielding. His arms, hard and strong, molded her to the length of his body.

His kiss was long and deep and thoroughly sexual as his tongue dipped into the hollow of her mouth, withdrew, and probed again. "Shay, Shay," he breathed into her ear after having charted a path there with light kisses across her cheek. "I wrestled with myself as long as I could. I had to see you. I had to know if what I was feeling was real or just the aftereffects of an unusual weekend spent away from home. It had been months since I'd left Brookside for even a day. You were so different from the women my well-intentioned friends try to pawn off on me. You are so different from any woman I know."

He tilted her head back once more and, holding her jaw firmly between his fingers, kissed her with a passion that stole her breath and her reason away. "All weekend, from the moment I took that towel off my head and saw you standing there with that devilish grin on your beautiful face, I didn't know which I'd rather do, spank the daylights out of you or kiss you."

She grappled with his hands in order to bury her face in his shirtfront, to inhale the scent that belonged uniquely to him. "Me, too. I wanted to kill you one minute and kiss you the next. You ignored me. I couldn't tolerate that. Half the time you acted as if I wasn't even in the same room."

His chuckle rumbled in his ear. "Oh, I knew. I was biting imaginary bullets to keep my eyes and hands off you."

She lifted her head to weigh the measure of truth in his eyes. "And my portfolio. You analyzed the pictures aesthetically. You didn't even notice me."

His eyes, burning with an internal light, dropped to her breasts. "I noticed … everything. More than I should have."

He kissed her again, applying a sweet suction to her mouth, as though he wanted to draw all of her into himself. His hands roamed over her back with caressing motions. One slipped beyond her waist to cup her full hip. "Did you have a bruise?" he asked.

She smiled against his mouth, though they didn't pull away from each other. "About the size of a tennis ball. First it was royal purple, then it faded to a mute blue. Green set in next, and then it turned a sickly shade of yellow."

"I'm sorry," he said, rubbing the spot gently.

"I'm not. It proved that you're human."

"I'm all too human," he said with a growl, devouring her mouth with unleashed hunger. Not only his lips and tongue testified to his human nature, but also the steel evidence of his desire that pressed against her. She welcomed and responded to both, opening her mouth to his delicious ravishment and moving with reciprocal need against his aroused manhood.

When he pushed away at last, his chest heaving and his face flushed, he choked out, "We'd better talk." Taking her hand, he pulled her into the living room. Her feet seemed disinclined to move. His last kiss had drained her, leaving her with a debilitating lethargy. Conversely, her whole body was quivering with newfound life.

They settled close together on the couch. He took both her hands and held them on his knee. "Your mother told me you weren't involved with anyone. I want us to start seeing each other regularly, be together often. I thought we—"

She yanked her hands away as his words cooled her fevered senses like an icy bath. "Wait a minute. Back up. You asked my mother about me? About my love interests?" She trembled with anger.

For a moment he seemed stunned by her abrupt change of mood, then he answered levelly, "No, not directly. We were talking about you one day, and she expressed her regret that you weren't married, didn't have a family, and lived alone. I asked her if you'd been … involved … with anyone since your husband, and she told me no."

"What were you doing?" Shay asked, rising to her feet. She made a beeline to the plants in the bay window, where she viciously pinched off a dead leaf. "Checking up on me to see if I was good enough to be seen with you, the holy pastor of Brookside?"

"Now, Shay," he said tightly, also coming to his feet and planting both hands on his hips, "don't fly off the handle and lose your temper."

"I'll lose my temper if I damn well please. And you would too if someone were sneaking around, snooping into your private affairs."

"I wasn't sneaking," he denied. "I was having a conversation with your mother. She brought you into it, I didn't. Why are you getting so upset? There weren't any affairs for me to find out about."

"But if there had been, what then?" she fired back. "What if she'd told you I'd had a horde of lovers since the day my divorce to Anson became final? Would you have come here today pouring out your pretty poetic speeches and kissing me?"

He ran an agitated hand through his hair as he made an attempt to control his own rising temper. "I have the same drives and needs of any man. I'm attracted to you. I
want
you. I've confessed that to myself, to you, to God."

He went to stand in the other window. She stared out sightlessly. The sun was beginning to set. A dog barked. "I'm trying to be totally honest with you," Ian said. "I'm a man, Shay. But I'm also a minister. I take my commitment to God very seriously. Everything I do, every decision of my life, has to revolve around that."

She had no argument for such an avowal, and her furious bearing slumped in defeat. She turned her back to him and absently picked up a brass atomizer to mist a fern. "Then why did you come here? The situation is hopeless. I am what I am, and you are what you are."

She heard his heels on the hardwood floor only a moment before he lifted the mister from her hand. He set it on a black wrought-iron shelf nearby and turned her to face him. "If I thought it was hopeless, I wouldn't be here. I've known nothing but torment since I saw you last. The only way I could cope with myself and the fantasies I was having was to come here and lay all my cards on the table. I, probably more than you, realize that it won't be easy. Nothing may come of it. We might part as mortal enemies or great buddies or unfulfilled lovers, but I have to find out, Shay. We owe it to ourselves to see what happens, don't you think?"

"I don't know," she said with a groan. "Ian, you're a minister. A
minister.
In all my wildest imaginings, I never thought of being involved with a clergyman."

His teeth shone whitely when he smiled. "Believe me, I never imagined myself courting a nude model either." His grin softened and faded until his countenance grew serious again. "How do you feel about spiritual matters, Shay?"

The quiet intensity of the question told her how important her answer would be to him. "I was raised a Protestant. Mom and Dad and I attended church every Sunday when I was growing up, more because Mom wanted to go than Dad. I think he felt as I do, that it's not the organization that's important but what one feels inside that counts, an individual's personal relationship with God. Anson forced me to attend services with him. I went, but rebelliously. He attended to see and be seen, not for any spiritual uplifting. I abhor that kind of hypocrisy."

"So do I. We probably have more in common than you think."

He was trying for a lighter mood, but she was still concerned. Uppermost in her mind was the thought that she might be hurt again. She had married a man who had wanted to change her. She had made him unhappy because she obviously wasn't what he had really wanted. The wounds he had inflicted on her spirit had been slow to heal. He had made her feel unworthy, shameful. And if she'd been made to feel that way by a social climber like Anson, how would she fare with a spiritual man like Ian? Dismally.

"I couldn't change, Ian. I wouldn't if I could. I prefer to think freely, to form my own opinions about things, and to voice those opinions when and where I feel like it. I'd never want to cause you embarrassment or shame, but I couldn't be stifled."

"I knew all that when I came to see you today. I like you as you are, or I wouldn't be here. As I said earlier, you're a far cry from the women who are usually pawned off on me."

"Do you have blind dates arranged for you by so-called friends?"

"When I don't adamantly refuse them. You know, so-and-so's cousin who's visiting from Iowa, or so-and-so's kid sister who just graduated from an all-girl school and has a 'very good personality.'"

Laughter took away her worried expression. "I think we have the same friends!"

He pulled her to him, and they rocked from side to side as they laughed. She wondered how she had spent the whole weekend with him yet never realized how much fun they could have together.

"Neil Diamond and Barbra Streisand are going to be at Madison Square Garden next Friday night," Ian said. "Would you meet me in the city for dinner and the concert?"

"You like Neil Diamond, too? Along with Blondie and the Bee Gees?"

"Don't forget the Beach Boys," he murmured, nuzzling her neck.

"I'll never forget the Beach Boys." She sighed as his mouth closed over hers. His tongue sought out the vulnerable spots in her mouth and stroked them. He was an inordinately talented kisser, and Shay meant to ask him how he had acquired such a technique, but he was asking his own question.

"Will you meet me? Those tickets were expensive, and I live on a minister's salary, don't forget."

She struggled to back away from him. "Are you sure you want to pursue this, Ian? I won't hold it against you if you want to shake hands and part friends now." She might die, but she wouldn't hold it against him.

"I want to do more than shake hands with you." The kisses he was planting on the side of her neck confirmed that.

It was incomprehensible to her how his mouth could so effortlessly convince her that what they were about to do was wise. "I'll meet you," she heard herself half-whimper, half-sigh.

"Penn Station? Six o'clock? Will you have any trouble getting a train?"

"Penn Station at six will be fine, but I'll drive. I don't want to take the train home late alone."

"Good idea."

More exquisite kissing followed. Finally Ian raised his head and placed his hands on her shoulders. "I've got to go so you can get your dinner."

"I could fix something for both of us," she said hopefully, swaying toward him.

He shook his head. "We've got to take this slowly. An invitation to coffee was the only way I could see to get you out of the shop and alone. I can't tell you how glad I am that there's a scarcity of coffee shops in this town."

"Absolves you of guilt?" she teased.

He grinned. "Something like that."

Still holding her hand, he hooked his sportcoat over his shoulder and went to the door. "Till Friday?"

She nodded. "Till Friday."

They stood very close, the tips of her breasts lightly grazing his shirtfront. Long ago she'd given up trying not to look at him, to pretend indifference. Having survived the weeks of loneliness since their first meeting, she feasted her eyes on him, as he did on her.

She watched, mesmerized, when his fingers came up and untied her bow tie. She felt the fabric first tightening then relaxing around her neck, or she might have thought she was imagining the whole thing. The first button on her blouse fell free. The second. She held her breath. She wouldn't stop him, no matter what he did, but she couldn't believe this was happening.

He went only as far as the third button. With heart-stopping slowness, he carefully parted her blouse. His hand slid around the column of her throat. He pressed his thumb against the pulse point at its base. It was beating erratically. "I had to touch you with some degree of intimacy." He sighed. She closed her eyes just as his mouth fused with hers.

The kiss was hot, wet, and turbulent, evoking the very act of love. His thumb kept up that hypnotic massage along her neck. It was only a suggestion of the things she wanted him to do. It was only a suggestion of the things his eyes had told her he wanted to do. He could well have been caressing her nipples for their hard contraction against his chest. His answering groan as she pressed closer told her his thoughts were running along similar lines.

The forbiddenness of such thoughts, the forced suppression of the passion they shared, only heightened the sexuality of their kiss. Deep inside, the core of her femininity exploded with sensations that rose into her chest, setting her breasts afire and making her heart swell with what felt like love. Rationally, she knew that such a possibility was both electrifying and insane, but the desire that rushed through her veins diffused its message.