Fair Game (30 page)

“What about him?” Ashley said, looking from one to the other challengingly, daring them to take issue with Martin’s presence.

“Ashley, what is he doing here? The federal authorities have taken over. He’s off the case,” Sylvia said.

“He is here as my guest,” Ashley said.

“Your guest? What does that mean?” Sylvia demanded.

“Do you need a definition, Sylvia? There’s a dictionary over there on the shelf behind the desk.”

“I don’t think you need to take that tone with my mother,” Charles said stiffly. “She’s just had a terrible shock, suffered an awful experience, and...”

“Tell me all about it, junior. I was there,” Ashley said to him sarcastically.

“There’s no need to do this,” Sylvia interjected. “I was merely inquiring about the propriety of having that man here.”

“Propriety? Is Miss Manners standing behind the drapes, taking notes?” Ashley snapped.

“Ashley, that cop was supposed to be guarding my father, and my father is dead,” Charles announced with that juvenile pomposity that always made Ashley want to smack him. “Do you really think you should be entertaining him in this house after that? Personally, I can’t believe he had the nerve to come here.”

Ashley whirled on him immediately and said crisply, “Oh, stuff it, Charles.”

Sylvia stared, amazed, and Charles looked dumbfounded. What on earth had gotten into sedate, controlled Ashley, who had handled even her father’s assassination with minimal loss of composure? Now she was going to make a scene over this?

“You don’t have a clue as to what happened in Millvale,” Ashley continued, still addressing the boy. “As I recall, you were disporting yourself at a fraternity mixer last night while ‘that cop’ was risking his life to protect a public figure who resisted every effort to ensure his own safety. And as to whom I should be ‘entertaining’ in this house, I think I’m a better judge of that than you are, since I was living right here with our mutual father before your mother, much less you, ever crossed his line of vision.”

Sylvia gasped aloud.

“Furthermore,” Ashley said in conclusion, “as I’m sure you’re aware, Dad’s will gives me a life estate in this house. So both of you are here on sufferance, not by invitation.”

The silence in the parlor was like a thunderclap.

“Now, if you’ll excuse me,” Ashley said coolly, “I’ll say good-bye. Please leave word with Elsie if you need to contact me about the plans for Dad’s service.”

Ashley swept from the room, leaving Sylvia and her son to stare after her in shock.

In the hall she ran into the maid, an unflappable woman in her fifties with iron-gray hair and the serious demeanor of an expatriate nun.

“Elsie,” Ashley said, “I don’t want to be disturbed this afternoon for any reason. I will not be receiving visitors, and please take messages if anyone calls.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Ashley almost ran up the stairs, feeling guilty for asking the maid to handle her condolence calls. But the urge to be with Martin dominated everything else. The night without him had been awful; the thought of a future without him was even worse. Life was too short; her father’s had already ended, and she was determined to make the most of hers.

No one was going to keep her away from Tim today.

She entered the green room to find him looking out the window at the lush, rolling lawn.

He turned and faced her as she locked the door.

“I feel like I don’t belong here,” he said, gesturing helplessly at the elaborate furnishings.

“Do you feel like you belong with me?” Ashley asked softly, going to him and putting her arms around his waist.

He pulled her close and said, “I guess the others were as thrilled with my visit as Dillon, huh?”

“I’m thrilled with your visit. Forget the others. Forget everyone but you and me.”

He didn’t need to hear any more. When he kissed Ashley, her mouth opened under his in tender welcome.

She felt warm and alive and seductive in his arms. He preferred to go slow and be gentle; he wanted everything to be perfect for her. But it had seemed like forever since he had desired a woman so urgently and so completely.

“I need...” he said against her mouth.

“I know what you need,” she whispered back. “I need it too.”

He bent his head and drew his lips along the line of her throat as she sighed deeply, sinking her fingers into the wealth of hair at the nape of his neck. Ashley arched her back and bent like a bow over his supporting arm as he lowered his mouth to her breasts, nuzzling them through the thin cloth of her dress. She held still as he ran her zipper down its track. Then she shrugged her shoulders to let the rustling silk fall in a puddle to the carpet.

Underneath she was wearing a camisole and pants. Martin reached for the little pearl buttons on the sheer bodice, but his large fingers felt like sausages and made no progress with the tiny, elusive fasteners. As impatient as he, Ashley slid her smaller hand under his and tugged hard, sending a spray of buttons flying to the floor.

Martin pushed the covering material aside quickly, separating it to reveal her breasts, small and rounded, perfectly shaped, with dusky satin nipples. He had one in his mouth almost before he’d seen it, covering her other breast with his free hand.

Ashley gasped at the contact and swayed unsteadily as he bent and slipped his arm under her knees, raising his head to negotiate their passage as he carried her through the sitting-room door and into the adjacent bedroom.

He brought her to the four-poster and set her on the bed, releasing her just long enough to yank off his jacket and tie. When he joined her, she pulled him down with her and they sprawled full length on the lace coverlet.

He kissed her again, lingeringly, and then turned his attention once more to her breasts. He laved the pouting nipples with his tongue until they were drenched and swollen and sensitized to a point just below pain. Ashley lay supine, pinned by his weight, her eyes slitted and her breath coming in increasingly short bursts. When Martin moved his head to plant a row of kisses on the soft flesh of her shoulder, she hooked her arms around his neck and sat up, pressing her lips to the pounding pulse in his throat.

“Take off your shirt,” she murmured. “I want to see you again.”

He tilted his head back to expose his skin to her exploring mouth, running his fingers down the satiny expanse of her naked back, too absorbed in touching her to free his hands and obey.

“I’ll do it,” she added. “I’m a little better with buttons than you are.” She undid the shirt and pulled it off him, then hugged him tightly, rubbing her cheek on his chest, enjoying the feel of his smooth skin roughened by the thatch of black hair.

“Oh, you’re beautiful,” she murmured, overcome with longing. “I remembered how beautiful you are.”

He tugged on her hair to make her look up at him.

“Ashley, I have to tell you... I have to say...” he began huskily, then stopped abruptly as words failed him.

She put her finger to his lips.

“Don’t talk,” she told him softly. “I feel the same way you feel. Just love me, darling. That says it all.”

He was eager to comply, pressing her back into the bed and taking off the rest of her clothes, When she was nude, he stared down at her, then slowly traced the firm line of her waist and hips with the back of his hand.

“Your skin is like milk, so perfectly white all over, not a mark,” he murmured in wonderment. “I’m almost afraid to touch you.”

“Touch me,” Ashley replied huskily, taking his hand and placing it on the mound of light brown hair at the apex of her legs.

He turned his hand, slipping it between her thighs, and she moaned aloud and returned the pressure when he felt her readiness.

Martin made a sound deep in his throat and bent swiftly, wrapping his arms around Ashley’s hips and lifting her off the bed. When his mouth made contact with her, she gasped at the sudden sensation of wet heat, then went limp with pleasure. She bit her lip, incapable of speech, until the need to have him with her, in her, became insupportable, and she clawed at his shoulders, forcing him to raise his head.

“Please,” she said, the throaty voice hardly recognizable as her own. “Now, Tim, please.”

He stood quickly and unbuckled his belt, taking off the rest of his clothes as she watched him expectantly, her expression besotted, almost drugged. When he finally moved over her, she clutched him desperately, sighing with satisfaction as he covered her slight body with his larger, harder one.

Ashley closed her eyes luxuriously. This was the way a man was supposed to feel, taut and muscular and enveloping.

Martin pushed himself up with one arm and pulled her into the cradle of his hips. She traced his spine with her thumbs; it was slick with sweat and as rigid as steel.

He looked down into her eyes as he entered her, and they both gasped aloud with the sensation.

Martin pressed his flushed, hot face into the hollow of her shoulder, and she kissed the side of his neck, tasting the musk and salt of his perspiration.

He pulled back slightly as she locked her legs tightly across his lower back.

“I love you, Tim,” she whispered, and then gave herself up to a world of sensation.

* * * *

Martin awoke around sunset. Ashley was curled into his side fast asleep, her cooling skin still dewed with their lovemaking. He needed a cigarette desperately, but his jacket was crumpled on the floor by the foot of the bed and he didn’t want to disturb her to get it. So he watched the slanting reddish rays of the sun coming through the drapes until the light faded to gray and Ashley stirred against him. She blinked, looked around, and then stared up into his face.

“It is you,” she whispered.

He smiled down at her.

“You’re really here.”

“I really am.”

She turned slightly, trailing her nails across his chest and kissing his shoulder. “I was afraid I was dreaming.”

“It’s no dream.”

“It used to be. I thought about this all the time,” Ashley said, settling against his shoulder.

“Me too,” he replied, kissing the top of her head. “I never believed it would happen.”

“I was afraid it never would.” Ashley sighed, closing her eyes.

“How do you feel?”

“Happy. So happy.”

Martin was silent, stroking her bare arm. His fingers touched the small bandage a couple of inches above her wrist.

She moved to look at him. “Does it seem wrong to be so happy when my father was just killed?”
 

“I don’t know. I do know that nothing we do or refrain from doing will ever bring him back.”

“It’s very strange, really, but I have never felt so alive,” she murmured.

He set her aside and climbed out of the bed to get his jacket. “It’s not so strange,” he replied, locating his cigarettes and extracting one from the pack. “Survival syndrome. I experienced it in Vietnam. You see someone killed, you’re glad it wasn’t you, and you want to affirm the life you still have.” He sat next to her and struck a match, lighting his cigarette.

“Is that where you got this?” she asked, touching the ridge of scar tissue on his right thigh. “Vietnam?”

He nodded. “Mortar shell.”

“You must have been very young.”

“Eighteen at the time of the Tet offensive.”

“Just a kid.”

“We were all kids. All kids, and scared to death.”

“You still like that music, from the sixties.”

“It’s about the only good memory I have of that time.”

“The sixties are coming back in a big way now, movies and television shows set during that period. How do you feel about all of them?”

“I don’t watch them. As far as I’m concerned, the sixties can stay dead. The war and the riots, the assassination of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King...” He stopped, realizing what he had said.

“It’s all right, go on,” Ashley said quietly.

“I didn’t mean to remind you of your father.”

“I understand. You were talking about the past.” She paused thoughtfully. “So I guess that makes you about thirty-eight now, right?” she said.

“Thirty-nine in two months,” he said, exhaling a stream of smoke.

“When you graduated from high school, I was in fourth grade.”

“I think it’s a little late to tell me I’m too old for you,” he observed dryly.

“I wouldn’t consider it. But how come no silver in that beautiful black hair? I thought the Celts were world famous for their premature gray.”

“If you keep working me over like you just did, I’ll be completely white in no time.”

“That’s not funny,” she said archly, trying not to laugh as she registered his teasing expression. “I think you would look very distinguished with a little frosting at the temples.”

“I’ll talk to my genes and see what we can do about it.”

“What about your mother? Is she dark like you?”

He shook his head. “Blonde.”

“My color?”