TWICE VICTORIOUS (12 page)

"I should get home." But her tone was hesitant, lacking determination.

"Later." This time, when he reached for her hand, she let him take it. She didn't
return his squeeze, though, and her fingers lay passive within his grasp. He moved his
thumb across her knuckles, wishing to be somewhere else, somewhere quiet and peaceful,
conducive to conversation, to shared feelings, to revealed thoughts. He knew what was
sapping her energy, stealing her usual vitality. With his help she could learn to live with
disaster.

"Maybe you're right." The words dropped into the dark silence and just sat
there.

"About what?"

She was silent a long time, long enough for him to leave the freeway and climb
the twisting road up to the top of the cliffs above the river.

"About my racing," she finally said. "My
obsession
, as you insist on
calling it."

It was his turn to be silent. He really believed that her determination to ride in the
Sawtooth Classic bordered on obsessive, but at the same time, it bothered him to hear her
admit it.

The dark, winding road took all of his attention. Finally he pulled into the parking
area at the Vista House. "Shall we walk? It's not far."

"I'm not crippled!"

He didn't respond, hearing the pain in her voice. A few minutes later they were at
the upper level railing, looking over an ethereal scene. The river glinted at the bottom of
the sheer cliffs, hundreds of feet below. They might have been alone in the world, except
that a few cars on the freeway sent arrows of light into the night. A tugboat on the
Columbia cut a faint wake in the black water as it chugged upriver, pushing long barges
filled with imported products for inland markets.

Adam slipped his arm around her and pulled her close. "You've changed your
tune," he said.

"It may have been changed for me." Her voice trembled. "I...I...oh, Adam, what if
I can't ever ride again?" She turned in his embrace, leaning against his chest, shaking him
with the force of her sobs.

"Hush," he soothed. "Hush. You'll be all right. Just be patient and keep working
on your exercises. Don't give up trying, don't give up hope." What was he saying? If she
had to give up cycling, she would have time for a life again. She would have time for
love.

She would have time for him.

He was warm. He was comforting. He was gentle. Stell clung to him, feeling as if
he was the only stable point in her confusing, callous universe. She welcomed the security
of his embrace, wanting this one moment in time where she could feel protected,
cherished. Where she could lean on someone else for a change.

Adam's breath warmed her ear. The vibration of his heart soothed, calmed, until
her sobs ceased to choke her, her tears dried. His arms, holding her tightly, were a shield
between her and a world she couldn't quite face.

"Hush," he said again. "It isn't the end of the world. You'll do whatever you make
up your mind to do, Stell. You won't give up."

"What if I do? What if...?"

He tilted her chin up so she looked into his eyes, pale in the moonlight. "Listen to
me. If you want to ride again--really want to--you will. I can't believe you'd ever let anyone
or anything stop you from doing what you decided to do."

"I'm glad someone believes in me." She buried her nose in the soft wool of his
sports jacket, savoring the woodsy-spicy scent of him. "I was beginning to wonder if I
shouldn't sell my bikes." That and other, more drastic, courses of action had occurred to
her this week, between old movies and trips to the refrigerator.

"Maybe it is time for you to do some pretty hard thinking about your priorities,"
he told her. "I hate to see you clinging to a lost cause." His voice was sympathetic, full of
unmistakable concern for her.

"That might be just what I am doing," she admitted. Just saying the words
triggered a terrible sense of loss. "After all, there's no guarantee I'll be ever be able to ride
competitively again."

"It won't be so bad." His breath disturbed the hair above her ear, sent tingles along
her shoulder. "You're depressed now because your leg isn't healing the way you think it
should." He turned her around as if she were nothing more than a toy in his hands.
"Whatever happens, Stell, it's time for you to open your eyes and see that there's a great big
world waiting for you. One that has nothing to do with cycling." He tightened his arms
around her waist, pulling her back against his body. "Look out there! How can you worry
about something you can't do anything about when you've got all that before you?"

She looked and had to agree. The Columbia Gorge stretched below her and to the
east, breathtaking in its immensity. She had ridden up to Crown Point many times, both
alone and in group rides. But she had never stopped to enjoy the view, never come out here
onto the overlook path below Vista House, not since she was a child on a Sunday outing
with her parents. "Oh my!" she breathed. "It is something, isn't it?" This was the first time
she'd been here at night.

Again Adam chuckled. "You sound surprised. How can you live in Portland and
not be aware of this view?"

"It's easy," she admitted, not particularly proudly. "All you have to do is live your
life so that scenery is low on the list." Taking a deep breath, she leaned back into his
embrace. "What do they say about taking time to smell the flowers? Maybe that's what I've
been forgetting to do."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you," he said, dropping light, butterfly kisses
across her nape. His hand crept under her light jacket, stroked across her midriff, skimming
the bottoms of her breasts so lightly she almost wondered if she wasn't imagining his
touch.

It would be easy, she thought, to relax. All she had to do was give up, to stop
striving toward a goal that might have become unobtainable, no matter how hard she was
willing to work.

Perhaps she could make time in her life for romance. For Adam. She wouldn't
have to feel guilty for stealing moments with him, away from her training.

His hands grew bolder, distracting her completely from thoughts of the future. As
her nipple tightened under his fingers, she felt a surge of warmth in her midriff, a wave of
desire so immense, so unstoppable, that she almost fainted with the sensation. She arched
her back, pressing her hips into his, feeling the swelling that told her his need was as great
as hers. As his hands boldly cupped her breasts, she drew a deep breath, knowing that
tonight she wasn't going to make any decision. Tonight she was going to take time out
from reality to follow her heart, not her head.

BREAKAWAY: a group of riders in front
of the peloton

Adam wondered if he was setting himself up for rejection again. Then he decided
he didn't care. Stell was a warm, pliant armful, willing, responsive, and as hot with desire
as he was. He ground his hips against the firm curves of her buttocks, intensifying the ache
in his loins, the need to bury himself deep, deep within her warmth.

He turned her in his arms, finding her mouth with his, plunging his tongue into her
hot sweetness. She met him with equal ardor, sucking, pulling him deeper. She moaned,
urgent sounds, pleading sounds. "Now," they told him. "Right here. Right now."

Oh, yes!

Her hands were inside his jacket, inside his shirt. Her busy fingers were
unbuttoning, tearing his shirt free of his trousers. She backed him against the stone railing,
her kisses randomly tasting his cheek, his mouth, his chin. She nipped, licked, nuzzled,
burrowing her face into the space where his shirt and tie had been miraculously loosened.
All the while her supple body was pressing, rubbing against him, arousing him to
unthinking heights of need.

He pulled his mouth away from her delectable neck, gasped into her ear.
"Wait...car... Not here." Tugging against her insistent hands, he managed to pull her in the
direction of his car, hating the bucket seats, the four-on-the-floor transmission that made it
impractical for them to consummate their passion here and now.

Stell swayed against the fender, pulled Adam against herself. "Lift me," she said
into his open mouth.

"Hmmm?" He'd discovered her chin, her throat, skin so soft, so satiny that he
wanted to go on kissing it forever.

Her hands were strong on his shoulders. "Lift me, Adam. I can't jump."

He saw what she wanted. His hands were steady on her slim waist as he lifted her
the few inches necessary to seat her on the front fender. She parted her legs and pulled him
between them.

He drew her tight against him. Even through his slacks, he could feel the furnace
heat of her feminine center. He stroked shaking hands down the outsides of her nylon-clad
thighs, across her knees, and up, feeling the strength of her athlete's legs.

She pushed his hands aside as she reached for his zipper. "Let me," she said, her
voice hoarse with wanting. Releasing him from the tight confines of his trousers, she
cradled him gently in her hands. touching him delicately with busy thumbs, driving him
into a frenzy of need.

His hands found the waistband of her pantyhose, tugged.

"Wait, Adam," she whispered, "not here. It's too public."

Reminded that they were on an open, windswept bluff, Adam forced his hands to
cease their impatient seeking. He looked around.

Theirs was the only car in the parking lot. The way the road wound along the cliff
tops, they would see any oncoming car for miles. "It's all right," he said, nipping the
scented flesh under her ear. He tugged again at her panty hose, determined to remove that
last fragile barrier.

"Wait," she insisted, her touch less delicate, more purposeful. "Let me, please."
She stroked the aching length of him.

Her mouth was busy too. Between the wet, demanding kisses she was planting
across his face and down his throat and the insistence of her stroking, he was helpless, held
in chains of passion stronger than gravity, more irresistible than the tides.

Caught up in forces beyond his control, he lost all awareness of the world around
him, forgot that they were standing on a windy point under a bright moon. His
consciousness shrunk to the sensations she engendered within him, the unstoppable
compulsion toward fulfillment. He forgot that it was only her hands, not her warm, moist
body into which he was thrusting.

The pressure grew, became overpowering. His body convulsed. The world
disappeared, while he hung suspended out of time and space.

She still cradled him, gently now, as he slumped against her, only his hands
braced on the fender keeping him from puddling on the pavement.

"Adam."

Her whisper reminded him where they were, fully visible to any passing car. He
fumbled in his pocket, handed her his handkerchief. "I'm sorry," he said, ashamed of his
lack of control, mortified at his lack of good sense, his selfish pleasure.

"Don't be. I wanted to." She cupped his face between her hands, forced him to
look at her. "I really did. Besides..."

He stopped her next words with firm pressure of his forefinger against her lips.
"Don't tell me you owed me, please."

"I wasn't going to. I was going to point out that unzipped trousers are a lot less
obvious than a skirt hiked up around my neck." She giggled, a sound he'd never heard from
her. "Not to mention my pantyhose draped on the car antenna."

He had to laugh. "Hey, credit me with more cool than that. I'd have tucked them
under the wipers."

"To blow in the wind, right?" She slid down, using his body to slow her fall. His
arms went around her as she leaned against him. "Can we go home now?" he whispered
into her ear, nipping the lobe and tasting again her sweetness. Once they were alone, he
would make delicious love to her, would bring her to completion, would share paradise
with her.

"Oh, yes, please. Let's go home." Her smile was a promise.

They were almost into town when a soft warble filled the expectant silence of the
car. "Damn!" He reached for his jacket pocket. Why hadn't he left the cell phone at home
tonight? Adam pulled to the side of the road.

A few minutes later his hopes for the rest of the night were forgotten. For a
moment he slumped back against the seat, knowing it was going to be a long night.

"What is it, Adam? What happened?"

For a moment he felt as if the weight of the world rested on his shoulders. "My
mother," he said. "She's in the hospital. I've got to go."

"Of course you do. Look, there's a truck stop just ahead. You can drop me there.
I'll call a cab."

"No. No, I'll take you home." He reached across and touched her thigh. "I'm sorry,
Stell. This wasn't how I planned the evening to end."

She patted his hand. "No, it's not. But maybe it's for the best, Adam. I'm not sure
we're ready for the next step."

To him, the next step seemed inevitable, even though in his saner moments he
wasn't sure taking it would be wise.
Damn! What am I doing? Mom may be seriously
ill, and all I can think about is sex.
He forced himself to concentrate on his
driving.

He walked Stell to her door, noticing how she tried not to limp. At the door, he
held her for a moment, simply enjoying the sensual pleasure of this warm, pliant woman in
his arms. "I'll call you first chance I have," he said, releasing her.

"I'll be waiting."

* * * *

For the thirtieth time Tuesday morning, Stell reached for the telephone. She was
finding it impossible to concentrate on her work. All she could think of was Adam,
worrying that he might be facing a major family crisis alone. She knew how frightening
that could be. Warren, her only close relative, had been in the Navy during her father's last
illness.

"Stop fretting," she told herself. "He's got a sister and brother-in-law, at least." But
she couldn't just erase her worry, or her growing anger at his not calling, to let her know
how his mother was, if for no other reason.