Wild Heart (29 page)

"Sydney." A muscle in his jaw spasmed rhythmically. He had reached his limit, and so had she. But she felt a little wistful as she kissed his mouth and took his full weight on her, because she had come so close just now, so very close.

With no preliminaries, he widened her legs with his knees and guided himself into her, releasing his breath in a long sigh as he sank deeper, deeper. To her surprise, he stopped then, holding still inside her. There was no need for words, no reason to say out loud
I
love you.
And certainly no reason to cry. And yet soft, stingless tears welled in her eyes. For as long as she lived, no matter what happened, she would always remember this moment.

In the end she was the one who moved first, stirring him with her stroking hands and the slow, rolling motion of her hips. The feel of him inside . . . indescribable; a glorious, sexy miracle. It wouldn't last; she knew the signs, and Michael was at the breaking point. But she wanted to give him the gift of herself, and for now nothing else mattered. She would find her own pleasure „ later.

Or so she thought. Until it changed, slowly, imperceptibly at first, then unmistakably, and something else began to matter very much. She couldn't fight it, this new urgency, and she couldn't pretend it wasn't there. It had her in a fearful grip, stripping away her hold on the known and familiar. She flew. She clutched at him, begging him with her body not to stop, and finally with her mouth—
"Oh, God, don't stop"
—whispering it against his damp throat, because if he stopped she would die.

Passion made him speechless, but not silent. The grinding sound of his guttural, uninhibited groans took her even higher. He tightened his arms around her, his face buried in her hair, his breath coming in the same ragged pants as hers. The rough rhythm of sex beat in her blood; her body ached for release. "Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop—"

Pure, gasping pleasure took her by surprise. She cried out some garbled exultation, heady with triumph at the top of her spiraling climax. Through the pummeling waves of sensation she heard Michael's answer, a rising roar of deep animal satisfaction. The sound entered her, went straight to her heart and the marrow of her bones, and became part of the pleasure.

Afterward, she couldn't move. He had
more
energy—"I feel like shouting out the window," he declared, "or lifting something heavy over my head"—but she could barely talk. And he wanted to know if it was always like that. "Absolutely not," she told him, and she was sure, because it never had been before.

"Why not?" He traced the bumpy line of her collarbone with one finger, a speculative light in his eye. "It ought to be."

She agreed. "But it isn't."

He leaned over and kissed the mole on the side of her left breast. He smiled. "We'll see."

Chapter 15

At least Philip had stopped yelling. At least Sydney didn't have to pull the telephone away from her ear every few seconds during their brief conversations. After three days, he had finally figured out that outrage wasn't going to get him anywhere.

"Just tell me you're still in the state of Illinois."

"Of course I am."

"Tell me you're still in Chicago."

"Yes."

"You are?"

"Yes."

She heard him sigh. "Well, I guess that's something."

"Philip, I'll tell you where I am if you'll promise to
keep it to yourself and not do anything about it."

"Sorry."

They'd been through this before, but she had hoped his answer would be different this time. "Then I'm not telling."

Silence, tense on her side, angry on his.

"What's it like at home?"

"What do you think it's like?"

The elevator doors rattled open; an elderly couple got off. Sydney kept her back to them as they strolled down the left-hand corridor and out of sight.

"Have the reporters stopped calling?" she asked in a subdued voice.

"Pretty much. So far your alibi's holding up. Aunt Estelle told everybody you wanted to get away from all the 'unpleasantness,' and nobody doubts it."

"Good."

"You'd just better hope no enterprising cop decides to look you up at your good friend Mary Kay's."

"That's not likely," she scoffed, although the possibility had occurred to her, too. "Philip . . ."

"What."

"I guess you'd have told me by now if Mr. Higgins called."

"That's right, I would've." A pause. In a softer voice he said, "No word since yesterday, Syd. I guess he hasn't gotten an answer to his cables."

"Will you do something for me?"

Silence; then two impatient breaths; then, "What?"

"Call and ask him to send another wire. Maybe the others didn't get through." That sounded pathetic. "There must be
some
reason they're not responding." She caught herself and lowered her voice. "Will you just tell him to try again? And—ask him if he's got any connections in Scotland."

"Any connections?" Philip sounded amused.

"Anyone he knows who might help us get in contact with the MacNeils."

"If they exist."

"Of course they exist."

"Sydney—Oh, never mind."

"What?"

"Nothing."

"You don't think they exist?"

"Skip it. I'll call Higgins and tell him to send another telegram. What's his number?"

"In the little book in my desk, in my room."

"Okay."

She rested her forehead on the cold black metal plate above the mouthpiece. "How's Sam?"

"Sam misses you."

She shut her eyes. "Is he all right?"

"Yeah. Sydney, come home."

"I can't."

She heard a rhythmic clicking: Philip drumming his fingernails on the edge of the telephone table in the front hall. It was a habit of his. "Are you in love with him?" he asked after a long pause.

"Very much."

Another heavy sigh. "All right, listen. Your secret's safe, Just tell me where you are so I can stop worrying. Slightly."

"Really? You won't tell Papa? You won't tell anybody?"

"Not a living soul."

"Swear?"

"I swear."

"We're in the honeymoon suite at the Palmer House Hotel."

"Damn it, Sydney—"

"We are."

"If you're lying—"

"I swear it." He muttered wondering curses under his breath, which she heard perfectly. "Language," she admonished, smiling.

"That's—brilliant. I have to admit it."

"I thought so." She wished she could see his face.

"Sydney, you amaze me." He laughed softly. "You know, this isn't like you at all. I'm impressed."

"Thank you."

"I never thought you'd get out of it. The rut—Aunt Estelle, the country club, being the proper young widow. All of that."

"No," she said faintly. "Neither did I."

"I've got to hand it to you. When you decide to break out, you sure as hell do it in style."

* * * * *

Michael never knew that someone was at the door until they knocked or a key scraped in the lock. It bothered him; his senses usually warned him of things like that much earlier. But the carpets at the Palmer House were like a thick blanket of snow, and the doors were solid as trees—"soundproof," Sydney had called them. He heard a key in the lock now; it startled him, and his pencil bore down too hard on the paper. He made a black scratch on the wolf's haunch. The door opened and Sydney walked in.

She smiled at him but didn't say anything. He knew what that meant. "How is Philip?" he asked, standing up.

She had put on her hat to make the call, even though the telephone was only down the corridor. "A disguise," she called it, with the brim down low over her left eyebrow. Now she took it off and threw it on the table—another hint that the news was bad. Usually she was neat and tidy, and wouldn't think of throwing her hat. "I told him where we are," she said.

He studied her face. "He's not angry anymore?"

"Oh . . ." She gave a thin smile. "I wouldn't say that." She walked around the room, picking things up and setting them down. "Everything's quiet, he says. No more reporters. Aunt Estelle has put out the Mary Kay story, and nobody doubts it."

"And Sam?"

"He's fine."

"Really?"

"Yes."

"That's good." She wasn't going to, so he finally said it. "No word has come from Scotland."

"I'm sure it won't be much longer, though." She came toward him, squeezing her hands together. She had on a white dress with yellow and pink flowers across the front. It made her look like a young girl. He had asked her not to put her hair up this once, and it fell loose around her shoulders, tied back with only a thin white ribbon. "I've asked Philip to tell Mr. Higgins to send another cable. Then I'm sure we'll hear something."

He smiled so that she would smile. "Yes, I'm sure we will." He sat down, pleased with the way he was learning to play this game people played: saying the opposite of what they knew was the truth. It wasn't lying, because everybody was in on it.

She came to him, sat down on the small stool in front of his chair. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing. Drawing a picture."

"May I see?"

"This isn't supposed to be here," he explained, handing the paper to her, pointing to the black mark. "My pencil slipped."

"Oh, Michael." Her long black eyelashes swept up and down, up and down. "Oh, this is wonderful." A lock of her shiny hair had slipped out of the ribbon. He rubbed it between his fingers before tucking it gently behind her ear. "This is really extraordinary."

He didn't see anything extraordinary about it. He had drawn the old wolf the way he remembered him best toward the end, lying down but alert, his ears cocked, a thoughtful look in his slanted, wide-spaced eyes. "This was my friend," he said carefully, watching Sydney's face. "I knew him for a long time."

She bent her arm over his knee and rested her chin on her wrist. "What happened after you got lost?"

The question was so big, he had to sit back in his chair to think about it. "I don't remember that time very clearly."

"What do you remember?"

"Nothing. Until some people found me. They took care of me, gave me food."

"Who were they?"

"Now I know they were Indians. It was a woman and two men. The woman was old. After the first winter, she died."

"Were you sad?"

"Yes." He thought of the toothless old woman in her huddle of blankets and furs, of how she never smiled and never talked to him, how she would hit him with the palm of her dark, knotty hand when he did something wrong. One morning she didn't wake up. The two men took her body away and left him by himself.

"What happened to you?"

"The others went away and I was alone."

"But how did you live? You were a
baby."

"I was eight, I think. It was spring, the snows had melted. I knew how to make fires." He didn't think she would like to hear of the things he had eaten to stay alive. "I learned how to live during that summer with the Indians. How to find food, how to keep warm. When winter came, I followed the wolves to the place where it was warmer. Closer to the water."

"Georgian Bay?"

"No, I don't think so. Smaller." He had studied a map in Dr. Winter's office once, looking for the landmarks of his life. "There's a lake called Nipissing. I think I lived there for a while."

Her clear green eyes were wide on his face. "But weren't there any people? Didn't you ever see anyone who could help you?"

"No one who could help me. I saw men who killed the animals who were my companions, my family—wolves and foxes, bears. Badgers. Men set traps that they died in slowly, in great pain. Or they poisoned them. Or shot them. Maybe it was wrong, but I learned to stay away from men."

Sydney took his hand and pressed his knuckles to the soft skin of her cheek, not saying anything.

"I think about that now," he admitted. "What would have happened if I'd come out of hiding. Gone to one of the hunters and spoken to him."

"You'd have been saved."

"I didn't think of it that way, though. I didn't think I needed 'saving.' Men killed for nothing, and I had the same fear of them that my friends had. I had taken sides," he tried to explain. "Humans were the enemy." She nodded, but he didn't see how she could understand. He was telling her that he had become an animal.

"And so you lived by yourself," she said, her voice solemn and quiet. "Were you very lonely?"

"I honestly don't know. Now I can say that I was, I must have been, but then... it's hard to describe. How my life was, my thoughts. Completely different from
now. Everything—flowed. Day into night, season into season. The book my father gave me—I read it until I knew it by heart, so I couldn't forget that I was a man. But time kept moving, year after year, until everything except the moment I was in began to seem like a dream."

"You lost yourself," she said.

He hadn't meant for the story to make her sad, but she looked ready to cry. "I'll tell you about the old wolf," he said, reaching for the drawing she had let fall to the floor. "We were best friends. We did everything together."

She sat back and put her hands on her hips. "How in the world could you be friends with a wolf? Why didn't he eat you?"

"Oh, Sydney." He laughed at her. "Wolves only eat people in Sam's fairy tales."

"Is that true?"

He sighed. "At the zoo, there's a sign in front of the wolves' enclosure. It says they travel alone, they're vicious and dangerous, they attack people and slaughter the caribou. That's all lies, every word. Wolves never hurt men. Never. They run for their lives from men, even when they're starving. What they eat—usually they eat mice. That's a wolf's main diet. They can't run as fast as a deer, so when they chase the caribou they look for the old ones, or the sick or wounded ones. It's true that they thin the herd, but the deer they kill are going to die anyway."

"And they don't travel alone?"

"That's the stupidest lie of all." He stood up, agitated. "Wolves have families, just like people. They live together, just like you live with your family. They have aunts and uncles, cousins, sisters, brothers—mothers-in-law. They stay together and take care of each other. And when they mate, it's for life.
They fall in love.
They're as passionate as you and I are, Sydney. As tender. As— devoted." He looked away, embarrassed by the nakedness of these words. He had never heard anyone say them before. But he knew what they meant, and he'd been glad when he'd learned them, so he could give names to his feelings.

"There aren't any wolf orphans," he continued when he saw that Sydney was smiling at him. "If the mother dies, someone else will take the pups, maybe a female from another den. And the father goes with them and becomes part of the new pack."

"They're not enemies? The two packs, I mean. Not even rivals? For food?"

"No. In fact"—she probably wouldn't believe this— "they pay visits to each other. Two sisters, or a mother and a son, for instance. Their packs live far apart, so they go see each other sometimes."

"Why do they live far apart?"

"For food. Each pack has its own territory, and they never cross each other's boundaries, not for food."

"Only for visits." She stood up. "They sound as if they're more civilized than we are."

"They are."

She crossed the room to where he was standing and put her arms around him. These were the times, when Sydney held him, or touched him with great tenderness, or said in words that she loved him, that he knew he must have been lonely when he had lived alone. Since then he'd changed, and she was a part of the new man he'd become. To lose her now, to go back to the old life—that was unthinkable.