wasn’t steady at all. It beat as rapid a tattoo as hers did, as his lips traced a pattern along her hairline then descended with lightning swiftness to claim her mouth. “Now tell me again how you prefer celibacy,” he insisted.
The moan she heard escape from her throat was part passion and part despair. Why did he have to come back just when she was getting her life back on track? She didn’t blame him for the baby. The doctor said her contraception had failed during a bout of flu, so it was nobody’s fault. But she did blame Zeke for rushing off to the States without a backward glance after she refused to go with him. She hadn’t been ready to tell him about the baby then, but she would have, given a little more time. Instead, he had slammed the door shut on further communication.
She had wanted to break the news in a way that made it clear he didn’t owe her anything. Knowing how he resisted family ties because of his own chaotic childhood, she wouldn’t have imposed them on him. Barely recovered from the flu, she hadn’t bargained on feeling so wretchedly ill in the first weeks of pregnancy, unable to deal with her own emotions, far less Zeke’s.
By the time she was ready, he had gone without leaving a forwarding address. She could have contacted him through the newspaper but it wasn’t a message she had wanted to risk falling into the wrong hands, so she had decided against it. Thinking she would never see Zeke again, it didn’t seem to matter. Now she wasn’t so sure.
The thought didn’t stop her body from responding of its own accord. After so long, his touch shocked her system into overdrive. Every inch of exposed skin felt alive in a way that terrified her. He was right, celibacy had nothing to compare with the way he made her feel.
It didn’t help to remind herself that forever wasn’t in his vocabulary. He was here. Nothing mattered except the demands he made on her mouth as his hands roved over her body, exploring, pleasuring, exciting. As he eased her jacket open and slid his hand inside, her heart almost stopped. When she felt him cup her breast, she went weak. She moaned again, shifting closer to him to press his hand against the spot where he would feel her rapid heartbeat.
He was aroused, too, she felt as their altered positions made it apparent. Seeing how quickly she had made him want her brought her senses close to overload. How could she have forgotten what they were like together?
She hadn’t forgotten for one single moment, she understood in the instant, eye-of-the-storm moment she had for clear thinking. She had accepted his invitation knowing what would happen. Wanting it. Wanting him.
His tongue began a sinuous dance with hers, sending spears of sensation lancing through her. She wanted to deny everything he made her feel, but the words stalled inside her, unable to compete with the way her heart pumped in erratic rhythm, hazing her mind and filling her with yearnings. As they kissed, he massaged her nipples, sending her into a spiral of desire that could end in only one way. “Oh, Zeke, it’s been so long,” she heard herself murmur.
“Too long,” he said in a voice like broken glass. “I want to make love to you.”
It was enough to break the spell. “No, Zeke.” She placed a hand against his chest, the gesture too ineffectual to push him away but symbolic enough that he understood her meaning. Self-preservation was the only thing urging her to refuse him. He knew every inch of her body as well as she knew it herself. He was bound to notice the changes in her and ask questions.
Questions she was far from ready to answer.
She found she ached to say yes more than she had wanted to do anything for a long time. To know the mind-shattering pleasure of his possession and to surrender utterly to his will, even as she commanded him, was a heaven she had dreamed of all the time they’d been apart.
Not that she hadn’t tried to put him out of her mind. Awake, she had almost succeeded. About her dreams she could do nothing. Instead of dulling her need for him, the long months of abstinence had sharpened her desire until it registered as an exquisite pleasure-pain sensation that ached to be satisfied.
But not tonight.
Not ever, if she had any sense. Her breath escaped in a sigh of frustration. When had she shown any sense around Zeke? This time she had little choice, she thought as she closed her jacket with shaking fingers and took an unsteady step away from him. It was only a few inches, but it felt like a vast gulf of emptiness opening between them.
“Am I going too fast for you?” he asked, sounding as strained as she felt.
If you could count the months of abstinence as fast, she thought ruefully. “No, it’s just…I don’t know how I feel about us anymore.”
His expression turned cold. “As I recall, you never did.”
The accusation in his tone shocked her out of her remaining torpor. “I wasn’t the one who went away and found someone else.”
Light broke across his strong features. She had forgotten the full force of his attractiveness, she thought distractedly. His dark hair was thick and full, curling slightly at the ends where it wanted a barber’s touch. In anger, his eyes looked like the sea in storm but the glint of gold reminded her of how they could sparkle wickedly at her, usually just before they made love. She closed her own eyes against the reminder. It would be a long time before she saw that look again, if ever.
“Is that what this is about?” he demanded, sounding furious. “It’s okay for you to send me away but not for me to find comfort somewhere else. What was I supposed to do? Wait until you made up your mind that I was worth making a few temporary sacrifices for? Or did you hope I’d come rushing back, unable to exist without you?”
Both options had occurred to her. Evidently only one of them to him. She dragged her fingers through her hair, mussing it. Her scalp felt tight and tense, good company for the rest of her. “I didn’t want anything from you that you weren’t prepared to offer freely, and I still don’t. You did the right thing finding someone else. I’m only sorry it didn’t last.” Then she wouldn’t have to deal with this.
Instead she would have to deal with knowing he was forever beyond her reach. She wasn’t sure which was the worse torment.
“Well, I did come back,” he said, startling her. “I tried moving on and it didn’t work. You can’t give to one person something you’ve already given to another, and Lucy sensed it. I decided to come back and find out if you felt the same way about me. Was I wrong?”
Say yes and end this now, she urged herself. Instead, what came out was a lame, “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know if you still care about me?”
He sounded so bitter that she wanted to weep. She kept her head high. When their baby died she had shed all the tears in the world for their child, for him and for herself. She had thought she had no tears left. Now, feeling her eyes grow heavy, she knew she did, but shedding them in front of him would be far too revealing. To herself or to him? The question caught her off guard, silencing her until she realized he was waiting for an answer.
“We can’t pick up where we left off,” she said with an honesty he couldn’t possibly understand. There were too many layers under what he thought he heard.
His generous mouth tightened into a hard line. “Can we pick up at all?”
“No.”
She hadn’t intended to be so forthright, but survival demanded it. If she said so much as another word, she would break down and admit that
