Clay (13 page)

The temptation to tell him was strong, though she still did not quite dare. Even as she hesitated, she was struck by what he’d said. Why was he there? Why had he stayed, unless it was because he wanted something from her, maybe even the same thing that she had in mind? Given what she’d done to him, however, it could be that he required having her willingness spelled out.

Without quite meeting his gaze, she asked, “Suppose I said yes?”

“To which part?”

“Any of it. All of it.”

His face lost all expression, though whether from shock or cogent thought she couldn’t tell. After a long moment, he gave a short, mirthless laugh. “I wonder what you’d do if I put it to the test.”

“You could try it and see.”

“I could. But I have to warn you that it would change nothing.”

He was wrong. She knew that instinctively. It would alter everything; just perhaps not in the way he had in mind. Her voice low and not quite even, she said, “I understand.”

He stepped closer, his gaze never leaving her face. Lifting his hand, he brushed her cheek, pushing aside the silvery curtain of her hair and trailing his fingers through the long strands as if taking pleasure in the silky slide of it through his fingers. His chest filled visibly with the depth of his breath. Gently he cupped her shoulder, smoothing it with his palm while he circled her waist with his other arm and drew her nearer. Her pelvis grazed his with an electric sensation that she felt to the last, tingling nerve end of her body. She saw the pupils of his eyes expand, darkening the rich blue of his gaze to the shade of a midnight sky. Her lips parted. His features tightened then he bent his head abruptly and took her mouth.

It was a tender assault of the senses, an introduction to everything he was, to his unwavering strength and the power of the emotions that coursed through him. She’d thought he was too quiescent before, and she’d been right. It had been a rigorously controlled pose, a cover for the complicated motives that propelled him. She could feel his anger and something more that was impenetrable but almost frightening in its intensity.

His lips were smooth and warm, almost possessive,
the touch of his tongue an assured invasion. She accepted it, gave herself to it and to the rising mixture of languor and excitement inside her. It was right, almost perfect, a promise of sweet surcease and impending joy.

His grasp tightened a fraction, then she felt the easy slide of his hand under the loose batik cloth shirt she wore and onto bare skin. Without haste, as if exploring the texture and heat of her, he glided his fingertips from the indentation of her waist upward over her rib cage until he gently surrounded and captured her breast. Her nipple crinkled immediately into a tight bud. Unerringly he found it with his thumb and brushed it into exquisite sensitivity.

Pleasure, relief and the distant intimation of something more fascinating made her feel light-headed. She melted against him with a soft murmur deep in her throat, wanting to be close and closer still, needing to be submerged in him. Lifting her arms, she wrapped them around his neck and shoulders and gave him total access to her mouth as she accepted right of entry to his. His answering groan was a bass rumble, as he took the kiss deeper while dragging her even harder against him.

It wasn’t close enough, wasn’t raw enough, hot enough or naked enough. She was losing control, drowning in a hunger greater than she’d ever known. Moist heat spiraled inside her, threatened to embarrass her, particularly when he touched her, lightly, gently, at the very center of her being.

He freed her mouth, drew a ragged breath. With the ghost of a laugh, he said against her cheek, “Your wish is my command, lady. What would you like?”

“I don’t know. Please…”

“Please you? I’d like nothing better. Only tell me how.”

He was tormenting her, and enjoying it, while she was far past games or reason. “Anyway you like,” she whispered. “Use your imagination.”

Imagination, that most potent of aphrodisiacs. His was limitless, and more devastating than anything she’d ever dreamed.

She must have helped him, must have moved to the bed and tumbled to the mattress with him, must have released herself long enough to skim away the offending clothing between their bodies before coming close again. She hardly noticed. Or if she did, it didn’t impinge on the moment.

She ached for the hot heaviness of his body, needed the certainty of his strength. She longed to be lost in him and never to surface again. His lips, his tongue were the center of her world for this short space of time. The wet hotness of his mouth on her breast sent her reeling deeper and deeper into this splendid oblivion of the senses.

The planes of his chest were firm and lightly coated with crisp yet silky hair under her questing hands. His waist had not even an ounce of excess girth. His belly was taut, the surface flat and hard. And the rest
of him was just as smooth and firm, taut and hard as his body. Yes, and hot, so hot.

He didn’t rush, but gave her exactly what she needed, when she needed it. Delicate and gentle, fast and rough, he possessed her with teeth and tongue and soft, moist whispers until she could stand no more. Then he eased into her by degrees, giving her only as much as she could take, until she was stretched tight and full, until she could feel the throb of the blood that coursed through him, until her body relaxed every internal resistance and she had him all.

It was repletion, a slow-moving satisfaction so wide and deep that she could feel all tension leaving her, drifting away until she was left in breathless waiting. Then he began to move. The sensation was so exquisite that she gasped and lifted her hands to clutch his wrists. He broke her hold and clasped her hands, fitting them to his, palm to open palm, with fingers meshed. She clung to him while his every rhythmic plunge took her deeper and deeper into perfect beatitude. Never, never had she felt like this, as if she could go on and on in this astounding physical union, as though she had been made expressly for this high-impact rapture. She didn’t want to let him go, didn’t want him to stop, didn’t care if the world ended in the next hour so long as she was in his arms. With tightly closed eyes, she savored the glorious upheaval with every atom of her body.

“Janna,” he whispered.

Slowly she lifted her lashes. His blue gaze burned
into hers. She felt its heat deep inside. His weight pinned her to the bed, wedged her thighs open so she was totally accessible, absolutely unprotected from him, and knew it. Slowly he twisted his hips, taking the last possible advantage of her warm, elastic depths.

She imploded in blood-red wonder. Her muscles clenched around him and her body curved toward him. He took her mouth, pressing her back down against the mattress as he rode her internal storm, aiding it, abetting it. But not quite joining it. Not quite.

The cry seemed to come from far away. Fretted with pain and terror, it tore at Janna’s nerves. In the same instant, she felt Clay shiver, sensed the hard tightening of his self-control before he was completely still.

She opened her eyes to stare up at him. He met her gaze a long moment, his own dazed, almost anguished. Then he snapped his eyelids closed, spoke on something like a groan.

“Lainey.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He released her abruptly, disentangled his long legs and eased from her. Rolling to his side, he lay facing her, breathing hard through flared nostrils. Janna stared up at the ceiling, trying to force her stunned mind to acceptance.

“Go on,” he said in low-voiced reassurance. “You have to see about her.”

“Yes. I’m…sorry.”

He understood without further explanation. “It doesn’t matter.”

But it did. It mattered to her. It mattered a great deal, for in his forfeiting of his pleasure for her daughter’s comfort and well-being she saw something, fully, that she’d known at least halfway all along.

She saw how fatally easy it would be to love Clay Benedict.

C
lay fell back on the mattress with his arms outflung and his rib cage rising and falling like the gills of a landed fish. He felt like one, too, as if he’d been snatched out of his perfect element into one where it was impossible to survive. The pulsing in the lower part of his body was so strong that he could count his heartbeats where there was normally none worth noticing, and he wasn’t sure when he’d be able to fit himself back into his jeans. Not that he’d be forever scarred by the disappointment; he’d get over it, one way or another. Just as soon as he finished wrestling his outraged libido back under control.

He couldn’t remember a more wrenching experience, not even in his high school days when routed from the bed of a truck by a cruising patrol unit driven by Roan, then a deputy. He’d been the next thing to gone, maybe even permanently, over Janna Kerr, Clay knew. And he wasn’t sure whether to be glad or sorry that he’d been forced to pull up short.

At least he’d carried her over the edge first. That was some consolation, though he wasn’t sure if it was male ego or simple fellow-feeling that made him see it that way. Could be it was some of both.

He hadn’t used protection.

Clay whispered a curse as the realization struck him. It was stunning, almost unbelievable, after so many years of being careful. Was this what had happened to Matt, the same uncontrollable, all-consuming need, leading to Lainey’s conception? If so, Clay took back every hard thought he’d had about his twin’s sense of responsibility. He even felt a flash of the old, special closeness to him.

Clay sat up on the edge of the bed with stiff-jointed care, raked his fingers back through his hair, ruffling it vigorously, then clasped the back of his neck. As he massaged it to relieve the tension, he glanced toward the hall. Light streamed from the other bedroom, indicating that it had grown almost completely dark. The rain had stopped, but it seemed a temporary respite from the way lightning still flickered beyond the window and thunder grumbled overhead.

He could hear Lainey crying and the low sound of Janna’s voice as she tried to soothe her. Guilt touched him for dwelling on his own trials when the little girl was obviously in greater pain. Listening hard, he tried to get a handle on what the problem might be, but could form no clear idea. It was something more than normal, he thought. The hopeless misery that threaded through Lainey’s cries scraped his nerves to the bone and tore ragged strips from his heart.

Pushing to his feet with a hard contraction of stomach and back muscles, Clay jerked on his jeans, then took a step toward the door. The nylon rope attached to his waist brought him up short. It was twisted
around him, a portent reminder that he could go nowhere. Or at least he couldn’t without explanation. Cursing silently, he untangled himself, giving the rope a hard jerk to straighten it, and then moved from the room into the hall. He stopped there with his hands on his hips, staring at nothing while he followed by sound what was happening in the other bedroom. Janna was taking Lainey’s temperature, he thought, though with scant cooperation from the patient.

Short moments later, Janna emerged from her daughter’s room. She flung him a quick glance as she slid past him to enter the bathroom then looked quickly away, as if she couldn’t stand the sight of him. Watching her take a clean bath cloth from the shelf and wet it under the cold water tap, he asked, “What’s wrong with her?”

“I’m not sure,” she answered with her back to him. “I may have to call Dr. Gower.”

It was serious then, even potentially dangerous. “Symptoms?”

“Fever, nausea, night sweats, you name it.” She paused. “Her eyes look glassy to me.” She hunched a shoulder, then moved past him again on her way back to the bedroom.

To Clay, a crisis was a problem in need of solving. It felt wrong to be helpless in the face of this one. The urge to make himself useful, to do something, anything, besides stand there made him more antsy than being hog-tied. He hesitated, then called out, “Anything I can do to help?”

“No. No, thanks,” Janna answered, her voice preoccupied. It was also muffled, as if she might have gathered Lainey up in her arms, maybe to change her nightgown or the bedclothes.

Clay swore under his breath. He’d had about all of this passive thumb twiddling that he could take. He’d learned most of what he wanted to know anyway—or would have the information when he’d heard from the tests being run by Doc Watkins. It was possible that he needed a new game plan.

He’d already crossed one foul line, hadn’t he? What was one more?

Janna came out of the bedroom again just then, leaving Lainey still crying behind her. Her footsteps were swift and purposeful. He moved aside, and she continued along the hall to the kitchen and dining area. Her cell phone lay on the table, plugged into its charging base. She picked it up and punched in a number, then turned her back to him while she waited for someone to answer on the other end.

She was avoiding him, could barely stand to be in the same room with him. Clay wasn’t sure whether it was guilt or newly discovered dislike that moved her, but he didn’t care for her attitude. Controlling his irritation with a strong effort, he moved in her direction to the limit of his cable.

She didn’t turn around, didn’t seem to notice. As she spoke into the phone, she kept her voice low. Clay’s hearing was excellent, however, and he had no compunction about using it.

“I need to speak to Dr. Gower,” she said with
brisk assurance overlaid by haste, as if she feared whoever was on the other end might hang up. “Could you please give me his home number or have him contact me?” She paused a moment, then said sharply, “Of course it’s urgent! Would I bother to call at this time of evening if it wasn’t?”

Clay pressed his lips together in a straight line as he heard the panic climb in her voice. Janna didn’t frighten easily; he had solid proof of that still attached at his waist. The situation was serious indeed. He listened with care while she ran through Lainey’s vital signs and the actions that she’d taken so far, as well as a somewhat longer list of symptoms than she’d given him earlier.

The reply to the spate of information was unsatisfactory, for Janna’s back stiffened and anger snapped in her voice. “I am not overreacting, Nurse Fenton. I know my daughter.” Janna listened a second. “No, she isn’t, but I’ve been with her day and night for years. I understand things she can’t tell me.” She paused again, then said firmly, “I really need to talk to the doctor. Yes, I know he needs his rest—so do I! Believe me, this is nothing personal…Look, if you won’t let me talk to him, I’ll bring Lainey to the clinic…I don’t care if it does draw attention!” She stopped, her stance rigid as she pressed the phone to her ear. After a second, she said, “Well, yes, I did say she might need dialysis again this soon, but wouldn’t it be better if…But that will take hours!” She drew a deep, hissing breath. “Fine. You do whatever you have to do.”

Clay watched with grim admiration as Janna punched the button to end the call. When she turned toward him, he crossed his arms over his chest. “So?”

“The nurse is coming.”

“All this way? As late as it is and in this weather?”

Janna tossed her hair over her shoulder. “It’s her choice. It isn’t storming in Baton Rouge, apparently. And she seems to think that Dr. Gower—”

“What?” he asked when she stopped. Then, as color invaded her face and she remained silent, he added, “That maybe you had a personal reason for wanting to see the good doctor?”

“It’s ridiculous,” Janna snapped as she looked away, past his shoulder. “I can’t imagine where she got the idea.”

He’d just bet she couldn’t. “Anyway, she’s coming instead,” he said in clarification. “So the question now is can Lainey wait that long?”

“I don’t know,” she answered in clipped tones. “Nurse Fenton wants me to put her back on dialysis in the meantime, and I don’t see what else I can do.”

He straightened. “I know a good doctor in Turn-Coupe. He won’t mind being disturbed. Release me, and I can have you there in half an hour, including the time to get to my airboat.”

She gave him a tight-lipped stare. “I can take care of my daughter, thank you.”

“I know that. It was just a suggestion.”

“You’re interfering in something that doesn’t concern you. Go back to bed and let me handle it.”

“Even if I can help?” He tried to keep the incredulous anger from his voice, but wasn’t sure he made it.

“I don’t need your help. I don’t need your advice. I don’t need you to ride to my rescue in your airboat. Have you got it yet?”

“I’ve got it,” he said, his voice even. “You don’t need me.”

She lifted her chin. Her gaze flickered, then she looked away as if unable to hold his gaze. “As I said, I can handle it.”

The sound of their raised voices had upset Lainey even more than before. Her crying had turned to screams, something that Clay couldn’t stand. He wanted to push the issue, to make Janna listen to him, but not at the risk of doing more damage than good.

As he watched her, tight-lipped and silent, Janna made as if to stalk past him again. He shot out a hand to catch her wrist, bringing her up short. She struggled for an instant, then went still as he tightened his grip. When her gaze met his, only inches from his face, he said softly, “Don’t take your nerves out on me, Janna. I don’t know what you’re afraid of, but I’m not hurting you or Lainey, and nothing I’ve done was without invitation.”

“No, you’re innocent, aren’t you? If anything happens, it’s all my fault, even if…”

“What?” he demanded. “Tell me.”

She looked away, biting the inside of her lip. Fi
nally she said in strangled tones, “If Lainey is really sick, the surgery will be delayed. We’ll lose the kidney that’s been promised, lose it for good.”

“I thought you might be afraid she’d die out here,” he said with a shake of his head.

“That, too,” she said. “And you warned me, didn’t you, which would make you right.”

The raw edge in her voice acted as a brake on his temper. “I didn’t say that.”

“It’s what you think. Though why you should care, I can’t imagine.”

“Kids are special. Lainey is special.” What he didn’t say, but recognized with grim certainty, was that he’d grown attached to the girl. She was sweet and good-natured in spite of her problems. She took them in stride, was so incredibly brave about most of it, that she’d won his heart. That she was a small edition of her mother could be a factor as well.

“Really,” Janna said in satirical disbelief. “At what age does that end? When she becomes a teenager maybe? Is that when they cease to be special and become expendable?”

Clay thought of Roan’s son Jake, a funny, awkward and wise fifteen, irritating at times with his mannerism and poses, but promising to be a decent citizen and Benedict scion one day. His very being rejected the idea of the boy’s death. “God, no,” he said. “Kids of any age are hope incarnate, as close to immortality as we’ll ever get.”

“Touching, or it would be if I believed you.” She jerked her arm from his grasp and moved quickly
along the hall, vanishing once more into the room where Lainey lay. After a moment, the girl’s screams increased in a sure sign that her dialysis tubing was being hooked up.

Janna didn’t understand, Clay thought, had no conception of the Benedict creed toward kids. The more the merrier about covered it. Even as he accepted that, another part of his brain processed the salient fact that she had just hinted at knowledge of the dead teens found in the swamp. How was that possible, here in her isolation? It also sounded as if she was aware that he might be a suspect in the deaths. But if that was so, why in heaven’s name had she ever let him make love to her?

They had made love, not just had sex. What they shared had been no fast and frantic coupling to scratch an itch, but something special. It had been a dream of sensual exploration, or so he’d thought and felt. Janna had needed him, yes, but she’d also wanted him; he was sure of it.

Yet now that it was done, why was she so set on pushing him away as if she had no more use for him? Two possibilities came to mind. The first was that he was wrong, that it had been about sex after all. The second was that she felt guilty, as if there’d been something behind it.

Either way, it disturbed him.

It disturbed him so much that he was going to get to the bottom of it, one way or another. Now wasn’t the time, not while Lainey cried in the next room as if everything had gone wrong in her young life and
would never be right again. But it would happen soon, one way or another.

Clay stood the overwrought screams for as long as he could. When he felt the next one would send him around the bend, he swung around and made his way back into his bedroom. At the foot of the bed where the cable was fastened, he bent to catch the frame and give it a hefty pull toward the door. It slid a good three feet. A bit more effort and he had gained the slack in the cable that he needed. With his face set in taut lines, he left the room again, heading down the hall, jerking the plastic coated restraining cable with every hard stride so that it slapped the door facing behind him like a whip.

Janna was sitting on the side of the bed, holding Lainey on her lap while the girl’s plastic dialysis tubing snaked down around their legs. She looked up with wide, startled eyes as Clay appeared in the doorway.

“I had to come see for myself,” he said in curt explanation for his presence, lifting his voice above Lainey’s sobs. “Any change?”

Janna shook her head.

“An alcohol sponge bath might help the fever.”

The look she gave him was scathing. “I tried that. It hurts her and she fights it, which just makes her worse.”

“Sometimes things have to get worse before they can get better.”

“Thank you, Dr. Benedict. I suppose you think you can make her all well.”

“I could at least try.”

“No, thank you. I told you before—”

“You don’t need me, I got that. But what does Lainey need?”

She bent her head, speaking against Lainey’s shining hair even as she tightened her arms against the child’s wailing struggles. “She’s mine. My child, my responsibility.” Her voice dropped lower. “My life.”