Banish Misfortune (8 page)

She waited for his withdrawal, but it didn't come. "Then you can trust my experience," he murmured. "Come to bed with me, Jessie."

She didn't move. She could have pushed him away, and he would have let her. She could have strode past him, out of his room, out of his life, and he would have let her. She didn't move.

A thousand protests screamed through her mind, a thousand drawling insults to put him in his place. She didn't say a word.

A hundred misgivings filled her mind. Peter and Jasper and Kinsey Enterprises. And X. Rickford Lincoln, his heavy face masked with lust and then anger. She needed Springer MacDowell like she needed a hole in the head.

"I'm going back to my room."

"No, you're not."

"Are you going to try to stop me?"

"No." The word was low and beguiling, and his other hand slid up her arm, lightly touching, tantalizing, but in no way restraining. "You can go if you want to. But you don't want to. Do you?" His head moved closer, blotting out the light, his other hand holding her still for his kiss. The lips were warm, flesh on her flesh, a gentle exploration, a question, a soothing balm for her lacerated soul. "Do you?" he whispered again against her lips.

She would have shaken her head in denial, but it would have broken the tantalizing bond. "No," she said silently against his mouth. And liking the way her lips moved against his as she formed the word, she tried it again. "No."

It seemed to be all the permission he needed. His arm slid around her slender body, pulling her up against him, and the warmth began to seep into her chilled flesh once more. His mouth moved on hers, soft, damp and tantalizing, his tongue deftly tracing the soft contours of her lips before slipping inside. Jessica told herself she could remain passive, stand there in the comforting circle of his arms, with his mouth on hers, and be unmoved. It would be easy enough to view it as a performance, she told herself. After all of Springer's practice he must be rather deft—she could watch him with interest, see how he managed to move her from the corner of the bedroom to the wide queen-sized bed several feet away. Would he carry her? She'd rather liked it when he carried her out on the beach— what she could remember of it, that is. Men didn't usually attempt to carry her. Despite her current birdlike weight, her five-foot-eight-inch proportions made her an unwieldly package, unwieldly enough to discourage even closet romantics like Peter.

But Springer was tall enough and strong enough to do the thing with grace. He might even—

Suddenly she jumped, startled, and stared up at him in amazement. Springer had just bitten her on the nose.

"When I kiss a woman I like her complete attention," he observed politely. He still had her tightly wrapped against his body, and she recognized belatedly the feel of his hardened flesh against hers.

"I was just wondering how you were going to get me over to the bed," she said, hoping to puncture that imperturbable calm of his.

"Who said anything about a bed?" he drawled, nudging her hips with his blatantly aroused pelvis. "I thought we could make love right here."

She knew he was goading here deliberately, making her angry enough to shatter the dreamworld she built up every time he kissed her, but it didn't halt her rage. Shoving him back with a sudden surge of strength, she caught him off-balance. He fell back against the door, and she was free, racing across the room toward the sliding glass door and an unwanted freedom.

She didn't get very far. A large foot stuck out, catching her ankle, and she tripped, sprawling sideways across the rumpled bed, with Springer beside her, half on top of her, his hands catching her pale shoulders and pressing her against the sheets.

"That's how I'm planning to get you on the bed," he said, his voice breathless with suppressed laughter and something else. Jessica looked up at him then, recognizing that laughter, and to her amazement, released a small, rusty laugh of her own.

"Very adept," she said dryly, ignoring the unfamiliar tightening in her loins. Even with him supporting the majority of his weight on his elbows he was still heavy, his hips pressing against hers, one long leg flung carelessly over hers, imprisoning her. And yet it wasn't a prison, she thought. It was safety, protection from the outside world. And very dangerous protection it was.

"Well, well," Springer said softly, his breath warm and damp and sweet on her suddenly vulnerable face beneath him. "I've done very well with you tonight,

Jessie, love. I've made you laugh—" his mouth gently brushed her temple "—and I've made you angry—" he kissed her nose "—I've frightened you—" he kissed her ear "—and I've turned you on." He pulled back to eye her speculatively. She could feel the warmth of his flesh through the open shirt, feel the rigidity of his desire through the heavy denim jeans. "That's quite a torrent of emotion from a Snow Queen."

The room grew suddenly still as Jessie lay beneath him. She could hear the distant sound of the Long Island surf, the quiet rustle of the sheets around them and the springs beneath them. Everything else was silent.

"I wonder," Springer murmured with a vague, almost clinical interest, "if I could make you cry?"

"Would you want to?" she whispered back.

"Very much. Not from sadness," he said, moving closer to kiss each fluttering eyelid. "I want to make you moan and weep from pleasure. And I want you to cry when you need to, and something tells me you need to a lot."

"I don't cry," she said, ignoring the strange emptiness in the pit of her stomach. "And I hate to disappoint you, but I make love in total silence."

She could see the grin slashing across his face in the midnight room. "Liar. I'm sure you make all the appropriate noises at the appropriate times. You're a professional actress, poor Jessie. You know your part and you play it to the hilt."

"Then what am I doing here?" She wanted the words to come out stubborn and challenging; instead, they merely sounded plaintive and just a tiny bit lost.

"Stepping out of character," he whispered. "And tonight when you moan and cry you're going to mean it." Springer's mouth feathered hers, softly, his tongue delving past her parted lips. "Aren't you, Jessie?" he taunted, returning again and again to her mouth like a hummingbird drawn to a flower. "Aren't you?"

"Yes," she found herself saying, not quite believing

it.

With clever, knowing hands he pulled the caftan the rest of the way off her shoulders, down to her waist. She lay there passively beneath his touch, a slight smile on her face, as his mouth moved to follow his hands. "Your skin is like silk, Jessie," he whispered against her. "Smooth and creamy and untouched. Are you cold, Jessie?" He slid the rest of the caftan off her hips, the strong, callused hands warming her cool flesh. His mouth was at her breasts now, capturing one small peak, his tongue swift and sure and suddenly arousing, and his hands trailed back up her legs to her narrow hips. She could feel the emptiness in her belly sink lower, and the hollow began to fill with a slow burning that frightened her. She trembled in his arms, suddenly frightened, but his hands drew no closer, even as his mouth turned to her other breast.

She was vaguely aware of him shrugging out of that loose white shirt, knew when his hand left hers to fumble with the clasp of his jeans. But she had lost her interest in practical matters. Technicalities no longer had the ability to distract her—instead of wondering how he was going to peel out of those faded jeans of his, she found she needed all her scattered concentration to deal with the unexpected longings that seemed to have taken over her body.

He was warm and strong and hard against her as his hands and mouth once more claimed her. Her brain seemed to be melting in the heat of the moment, all practicalities fading away beneath the delicious, practiced onslaught. She could feel those strong, hard hands of his sweeping down her hips, and for a moment she panicked. She had no protection, but then, that was no real problem. She had played baby roulette once before and she figured she was safe—one more curse from an angry god. And she had no cream with her—Springer would find out soon enough that sex with an Ice Princess would come fraught with all sorts of discomforts.

And then his hands slipped down between her legs, finding her with a sure touch that sent the coals in her loins into a burning blaze.

She tried to pull away but he held her fast, one arm pinning her down as his mouth trailed damp, demoralizing kisses across her flat stomach, while his fingers stroked her into a quivering submission that was gradually turning into something else. She could hear small, whimpering sounds, tiny cries of pleasure and frustration, and she realized with a distant shock that the sounds came from her. She had meant to make the requisite noises to soothe Springer's male ego. Never had she thought that he could actually elicit that burning, seeking response from her.

"That's right," he murmured against the gentle fullness of her breast. "Talk to me, Jessie. Tell me about it."

She was fighting it. Fighting the spreading languor, fighting the bewitching heat of his body. Desperately she struggled to regain that part of herself that seemed in danger of being lost forever, but the effort was proving to be too much. Against her will her hips were arching against his hand, even with her strong white teeth clamped down on her lower lip the small cries were escaping from the back of her throat. And still he played with her, patient, determined to wrest the response from her that she didn't want to give.

His large, strong hands were under her arms, pulling her up across the bed until her head rested on the pillows. The hands left her, trailing down her fevered body to her legs, parting them with inexorable gentleness. And then he was above her, dark and strong and menacing, like a fallen angel, and she knew he would take her, and she knew she would be lost.

She made one last, hopeless effort to summon up the green pasture, the clear blue sky, floating, floating...

Until the slow, steady invasion began to rip through the cloudlike veil, and her eyes flew open, staring up into his intent ones, as he slowly filled her, the smooth fluidity of his movement telling her that even if her soul wasn't ready, her body was.

"Stay with me, Jessie," he whispered thickly. "Don't leave me alone while you go off to never-never land. Feel me, feel this." He slowly withdrew, then arched up to fill her again. "It's real, it's good. Stay with me, Jessie."

She had no answer for him. She was lost forever, trapped, not by his strong, hard body, but by the long-dormant desires that had risen beneath his skillful handling. She could feel the tension knotting her muscles— from her toes, which dug into the rumpled sheets, to her fingers, digging into his strong shoulders. She could feel the quivers that were shaking her body beneath his. She was lost, out of control, with no place to hide.

"Don't," she gasped in a weak cry. "Don't do this to me." The clear blue sky faded forever beyond reach, leaving only the midnight darkness.

"I can't stop, Jessie," he murmured. "I have to." And his hands reached down to cup her slender buttocks as he thrust deeper, deeper, his muscles bunching under her clinging hands as he drove her onward, further and further, their skin wet and clinging, their breathing rapid, their hearts pounding.

No,
she wept inside.
No, I won't. I won't let him
…

And then suddenly, in the midst of her protests, it shattered, the one inviolate part of her, and the midnight darkness split apart as her body arched up against his. She could hear her voice in the distance, weeping "no" to the angry heavens, and the rain of her tears washed over them.

She was still crying, still mumbling "no" like a hopeless litany when he withdrew from her body, rolling onto his side and pulling her into his arms. One strong hand brushed the tears from her swollen face as he pressed her head against his sweat-slicked shoulder. "Yes, Jessie," he said softly, gently mocking. "Yes." And reaching down with infinite care, he caught one trembling hand as it rested numbly against the sheet. Bringing it to his mouth, he kissed the faint, spidery tracing of scars on the wrist. "Yes, Jessie," he said again. Her sobs were slowly, slowly dying away. "Go to sleep, love."

"No," she whispered one last time. And slept.

Chapter Eight

The nightmare of memory was on her again, and there was no way she could fight her way out of it. She shivered in her sleep, pulling her hands closer to her body, protectively, and tried to fight the past. But it was useless, a vain struggle, as she lay there entwined in Springer MacDowell's arms and the mists of sleep, and remembered.

The second time Jessica slashed her wrists was when Sunny had dropped out of high school, pregnant, and married her seventeen-year-old boyfriend. And the third time was when her parents wrapped their car around a tree out on Route One. The ironic part of it was that neither of them had been drinking. They'd both been going through a period of peaceful sobriety and relative sanity. It was another drunken driver who'd forced them off the road by pulling directly in front of them at a red light.

To everyone's horror, Jessica had laughed when they told her, a short, sharp laugh. And then she'd calmly arranged for the funeral, every last little detail, from what they would wear, decked out in their twin bronze coffins, to what would be lovingly chiseled on the headstone, to who would baby-sit for Sunny's three-year- old and one-year-old during the service. And two weeks later, when everyone was gone, she went up to her solitary bedroom and slashed her wrists again.

She did a better job of it that time. The cuts were deep, and she lost a lot of blood. They sent her to therapists, and she played mind games with them. They sent her to her stern Lutheran pastor, and she prayed with him. They sent her to her sisters, and she baby-sat for one and listened to the other's triumphant social life with glazed boredom.

She joined Maren at the university for lack of anything better to do, and it was there she discovered her ability to make unpleasantness disappear. She kept cool and aloof from Maren's harem of jocks and scholars, and it was there that she acquired the nickname "Ice Princess." She was so completely different from Mar-en, who pursued an almost desperate quest for love and approval. Jessica needed no love, no approval, no hasty fumblings and fevered couplings. All she needed were her brains and her blind ambition.

She became adept at manipulating people by the time she finished graduate school, with the reputation for sleeping with her professors to get good grades. In fact, she slept with no one. She knew just how to play an ardent suitor along, without ever having to deliver the goods.

The only time she'd ever been caught short had been three years earlier, just after she'd joined Kinsey Enterprises. For a brief period Philip Mercer had been able to charm his way into her armored heart, into her life, into her bed. And she had withstood it, with her mind sailing in the blue, blue skies, until Philip had given up attempting anything more than a physical penetration of her icy reserve and left her. And she was relieved.

Everyone at Kinsey Enterprises assumed she was sleeping her way to power. And she was happy to have them believe it. It kept her peers at arm's length, convinced that she wouldn't bother with the lower orders. And it kept Peter Kinsey at bay, waiting for Rickford Lincoln to finish with her. But it hadn't kept Springer MacDowell away, and now she was lost.