Текст книги "Tasting Fear"

Автор книги: Shannon McKenna

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The silence that followed was an invisible wall between them. She was lost in her thoughts behind it, hidden from him. It made him anxious and lonely. He wanted to break through, get inside.

He needed more info. More intel. She was so complex, so goddamn much going on in her head. He wanted her exact specs, a manual of her operating systems. He wanted to study her, absorb her. Master her, as if she were a math problem, an insanely complicated puzzle. And she’d have his ass barbecued if he ever said anything like that to her. He had to watch his metaphors with this woman.

“Talk to me,” he blurted.

She looked at him, startled out of her reverie. “About what?”

“About yourself. I want to know more. You’re incredible. Unique.”

She harrumphed. “Yeah. I’m so unique, I’m practically extinct.”

He ignored that. “Tell me about your childhood, your mother, your sisters,” he urged. “Tell me anything. I don’t care what.”

Her big eyes were wary of the need she felt emanating from him, a vibration he could do nothing to hide. “Duncan…”

“You make me feel so alive. Just…please, Nell. Just tell me how it is to be the way you are.”

His appeal touched her, and she gave him a tremulous smile. Something relaxed inside him. Excellent. By sheer chance he’d hit upon the exact trick to calm her down. Some judicious pity mongering, a small, tasteful glimpse of desperation, and she’d melted. He hadn’t calculated that strategy, either. It had simply come to him. Instinct.

Maybe this convoluted emotional shit could be learned, after all.

Chapter

9

The look on his face, that note in his voice, it released the floodgates. Nell talked so much, she embarrassed herself. She told him things she hadn’t let herself think about in years, things she’d pretended to forget. The lonely boarding schools, the bad foster homes. Her mother’s death. And that solitary afternoon in the funeral home, alone with her mother’s coffin.

The endless, terrible afternoon that still haunted her.

She had no idea there was so much to say about her childhood, but it tumbled out, charged with raw emotion. She told him about Lucia finding her. About Nancy and Vivi, and discovering that she could have a family after all. She talked about stories, poetry. Her magical refuge.

Duncan had listened intently. His rapt attention was flattering, but the car clock said it was after three a.m., and she looked up at the street numbers and realized that he’d been driving in big, aimless circles around his neighborhood for the better part of an hour.

“Why aren’t you going home?” she asked.

“I wanted to hear you talk.”

“We could talk at your apartment,” she pointed out.

“What I want when we get home doesn’t involve much talking.”

She crossed her legs with a shiver at the sensual promise in his voice. “Well. Be that as it may. I’m about talked out for now.”

He turned the car at the next block and started back toward his condo. “This morning you told me that you’ve got plans for your life,” he said. “Ambitions. Do those include a man? Or any room for one?”

She hesitated. There was a peculiar tone in his voice when he asked the loaded question. Something that made her vaguely nervous.

“You know, Duncan, I’ve babbled for over an hour, but you haven’t volunteered one single thing about your own life,” she said.

“You’re evading my question.”

“Why, what a coincidence. You’re evading mine, too.”

“I asked first,” he said stubbornly. “And? So?”

She twisted her hands together. “Well, my plan is to finish my thesis, get my doctorate, and find a teaching job. At which point, I guess I will attempt to have a normal life. The Fiend permitting, and all that.”

“Let me rephrase,” he said softly. “By normal life, do you mean marriage, kids?”

Nell stared at him. Her heart had started to thud quickly, and her palms felt damp.

He simply waited.

Nell stared at the streetlights swooping by. “Of course I dream about love,” she said quietly. “After all those novels and all that poetry, how could I not? But I know better than to take anything for granted. There are no guarantees. I’ll do the best I can. Try to get over my baggage. Hope that I get lucky.” With you was the real ending of that phrase, but her lips and throat trembled too much to say it.

He was quiet as he pulled into his parking garage and drove down two ramps to his own slot. He parked, killed the engine, and stared at the concrete wall in front of them.

“You’re special, Nell,” he said. “You should ask for more.”

Warmth softened her chest. She touched his face with the palm of her hand, and stroked his cheek gently. “So should you, Duncan,” she whispered. “So should you.”

This was the moment. It could make or break them, if he said the right thing. He looked like he was poised to say it. He covered her hand with his own. She was poised to hear it. She couldn’t move, or breathe.

Seconds ticked by, stretched to a minute. More. He didn’t say it.

She turned her gaze away, blushing madly, feeling like an idiot. Here she went again, projecting her silly romantic fantasies onto the unsuspecting man. And him, just bumbling along. No freaking clue.

She tried to cover her embarrassment. “So? I answered your question. It’s your turn to bare your soul. Let’s hear it.”

He looked alarmed. “I don’t know how to do that.”

“You just saw me do it,” she said. “Watch and learn, Duncan.”

“That’s different.” His voice was defensive. “You’re…you’re you.”

“Right, and you’re Duncan, and that’s what I’m interested in. Why don’t you start with parents? They’re usually at the bottom of things.”

He let out an impatient sigh, as if humoring a child. “My mom’s great. She taught elementary school for thirty-five years before she retired. She raised us on her own. She’s a general. Tries to run our lives, and mostly fails, but she’s a pretty good sport about it. Usually.”

“How did she feel about you being a spy?”

He grunted. “Hated it. She nagged and schemed.”

“Is that why you quit?”

His grin flashed. “No. I know how to block and fake. I suit myself.”

“I’ve noticed,” she murmured. “And your father?”

His face changed, like a door slamming shut in her face. “I have nothing to say about him.”

She flinched, took a deep breath, and tried again. “So tell me what there isn’t, instead of what there is,” she suggested.

He looked baffled. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Silence is as revealing as words,” she said softly. “But you already know that. I can see it in your photos.”

“Don’t go all poetic on me, Nell,” he warned. “Or I’ll devolve on you. Start to grunt and snort, and scratch my tufts.”

“Stop being ridiculous, and just tell me about him,” she snapped. “It can’t be worse than my father story. At least you know his name.”

He looked hunted, scowling down at the steering column. Finally started to speak, but his voice was very flat.

“He fell in love with a woman who worked for him,” he said. “His accounts manager. Sylvia. She was younger than him and my mother. I was thirteen. Bruce was nine, and Ellie was a newborn. Ellie was Mom’s last-ditch effort to tie Dad to her. Bad idea. Didn’t work.” He shook the memory away with a sharp wave of his hand.

“I’m sorry, Duncan,” she whispered.

“He tried to explain it to me before he left. How love was this great force he couldn’t resist. It was just his dick that he couldn’t resist. But his family paid the price.” Duncan shook his head. “He divorced Sylvia seven years later. Traded her in for a younger model. There you go. There’s the power of love for you.”

The bitter contempt in his voice chilled her. “That’s not love,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not love.”

He made a low, harsh sound of negation. “Whatever it is, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. It depresses me. Let’s go upstairs.”

He got out of the car. She flung the door open before he could come around and do it for her. She followed him into his building, miserably aware of having maneuvered him out of that wonderful, close place that they’d been before. She’d made him tense and defensive. Clumsy of her.

Well, hell. There were ways and ways to sweeten his mood. And she was not without her resources.

Duncan stood aside to let her in first, and flipped on a small row of track lights near the entry space, leaving the rest of the apartment in shadow but for the glittering cityscape outside. The delicious imminence of sex trapped her air in her lungs. She drifted over to the couches. They were big, oversized. Gray, velvety, plush. An odd choice, for him. She would have expected gleaming black leather, stainless steel, and glass. She sank into one with a sigh and stared at his perfectly proportioned black silhouette standing there. A hot sexual energy pulsed out of him, all the more potent for his silence, for how fiercely it was controlled.

It made her hot, shaky. Unstable inside. She could hardly wait.

“All evening, I’ve been thinking about your bare ass under that skirt,” he said.

She grabbed handfuls of the knit fabric, and screwed up her courage. “Do you, um, want to see it?”

“Yes,” he said. “Show me.”

She took her time pulling her skirt up. She drew it out, gathering up folds of fabric inch by inch, until she had an armful of knitted jersey pressed against her belly, and the tops of her stockings showed. And a strip of pale thigh above them. A tuft of her dark, curly pubic hair.

But her legs were still clamped together.

Duncan sank to his knees in front of her. His hot hands settled on her knees, pushing them wide. She closed her eyes, her face hot.

He sighed. “Ah, God. I love the stockings,” he muttered. “You are so fucking beautiful, Nell.”

She felt more naked like this than she had when she hadn’t worn a stitch with him. He grabbed her hand and pulled it down, arranging her fingers so that her clit was gently clasped in the V between her index and middle finger. “Touch yourself,” he said. “I want to see how you do it. You know. Watch and learn.”

She laughed silently, parting herself for him. Aroused by his intense attention. The feeling of exposure was transforming into something pleasurable. She slowly relaxed into it, like a cat sprawled in a patch of sunlight. “That’s one area where you don’t need any lessons.”

“I’m gratified to know that I’ve got at least one piece of the puzzle in the bag,” he muttered.

She ignored his sarcasm, and stroked the jut of his cheekbone with her finger. His skin was so hot and supple. “I fantasized about you, ever since you started eating lunch at the Grill,” she confessed.

He pressed a hot, lingering kiss to the top of her thigh. “Is that a fact? What did I do to you in those fantasies?”

“Lovely things,” she admitted.

He grinned, caressed the crease of her groin. “Such as?”

He waited, but she couldn’t speak. Her lips were trembling too much. “My mouth is watering,” he said, parting her labia tenderly, and slowly penetrating her. “Did I lick you in those fantasies?”

“Oh…yes,” she said, jerkily.

“Was it good? Did I treat you right?”

“It was amazing. It was…it was superdeluxe.”

He bent lower, and lapped the length of her labia voluptuously with his tongue. “And how do I measure up to myself?”

“You surpass yourself,” she admitted. “There’s more of you in real life. More of everything. More feelings, more orgasms. More problems.”

He chuckled, silently, his lips tenderly holding her clit, his tongue fluttering expertly, swirl, flutter, swirl. “Never mind the problems,” he suggested. “Let’s just stop at the orgasms. And linger there.”

“Okay,” she agreed.

“Forever,” he whispered.

It was the word that set her off. Forever. It made her pleasure rise to a crest and break in great, pulsing ripples of milky foam through the endless ocean of sensation. That sweet, hot swell of…hope.

After that, they went wild. A frenzied, feverish blur. No control, no need for it. His clothes came off, her blouse was ripped open, her bra unhooked. He produced a condom out of thin air, and he was inside her, pressing her down onto the couch. Folding her legs high. Hard, driving. Demanding and wonderful. They struggled, twining and writhing and pumping toward a violent, explosive shared orgasm.

His vital energy poured into her. She clung to him and felt its wonderful heat, transforming her, and a single, piercing thought formed in her mind. He lifted his face, and it popped out. “I love you,” she said.

His eyelids went tight. His face, blank.

Fear stabbed through her like a blade of ice. She’d ruined it. Now he would take back his intense, passionate attention—never mind that it wasn’t love—and she would proceed to shrivel up and die.

Then came anger. How humiliating, to be terrified just because she told a man she loved him. She had nothing to be ashamed of. He should be grateful. She should not have to beg for any man’s love.

“Nell,” he said, sounding pained.

“No. Forget I said it.” Nell tried to wrench herself free, but his full weight was pinning her down into the squishy couch cushions.

He rolled off the couch, onto the floor. “Nell, I’m sorry if I—

“Shut up, Duncan. The worst thing you could do would be to apologize. It’s the one thing I could never forgive you for.”

“So what can I say?”

“Nothing,” Nell whispered. There was a burning tightness in her chest. It felt like her heart was imploding. She collected her clothes and marched into the bedroom. He followed her in on bare, silent feet. Disappeared into the bathroom for a moment, to deal with the condom, and then appeared in the doorway again.

“Nell, don’t,” he said, his voice rough. “Don’t do this to me.”

Nell fought the tears. “Please, Duncan. Just give me some space. I’m too embarrassed to talk to you right now.”

“Don’t be. Please.” He slipped his arms around her from behind, and squeezed. “Thank you for saying it. Thank you for giving yourself to me like you do. You’re beautiful and special, and you make me feel awake and alive like nothing else. Please. Don’t be embarrassed.”

Nell covered her face. “You drive me crazy when you talk like that,” she whispered. “You’re schizo, Duncan. Don’t confuse me.”

“I’m just telling you how I feel. And being honest. Isn’t that what women say they want from men?”

“What I want and what women in general want are two separate things,” she said haughtily. “Do not generalize me.”

“Never,” he said, smoothly, fervently kissing her neck.

Nell sighed. “It’s strange. All those things you say, about how you feel about me? That’s exactly the same way I feel about you. I just interpret those feelings to mean that I’m in love with you.”

Duncan’s arms tightened. He buried his face in her hair.

“But we define those feelings in such different terms,” she finished. “And that shouldn’t be so important. But…but it is.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Tears overflowed. She let them slide down her cheeks.

He jerked as a tear splashed his forearm.

Nell stroked his arm, brushing the moisture away. “It’s okay, Duncan. I appreciate you telling the truth. Honesty is better than lies. I guess.”

“I’m giving you everything I have to give.”

Nell turned in his arms until she faced him, and rested her face against his chest. “Yes. And you give a lot,” she admitted. “I just asked for the wrong thing, that’s all. I love our time together. Don’t worry.”

It was confusing, maddening, but maybe she should just relax, and try not to put this experience in a marked box. After all, the feelings he described for her were more than most lovers had to brag about.

Dread lay heavy in Duncan’s gut. Something precious was slipping away from him, and he didn’t know how to stop it. He massaged the muscles in her shoulders and back, but she couldn’t relax. He didn’t blame her.

Duncan coaxed her over to his bed, stripping off what remained of her clothes, and turned off the light, dragging her close to him. She hid her face against his chest, and he cuddled her, stroking her back in long, soothing passes of his hand over the perfect fine texture of her skin, all the way down to the curve of her ass. His dick rose up, hot and hard, prodding her thigh, but he gritted his teeth and ignored its insistent, throbbing demands.

Patience. This time was all about Nell.

He slid his hand down the cleft of her bottom. She didn’t recoil or stiffen up, just nuzzled her face to his chest with a wordless murmur, and parted her thighs, letting his hand slide lower, delve deeper.

He slowly, tirelessly apologized for what he didn’t have to offer her by showing her what he did have. His other hand joined the action, caressing her clit from the front while he thrust two long fingers into her slick, hot little pussy from behind, petting and stroking in ways he knew she liked. Long and slow. No hurry. He drove her higher, until she was squirming, panting, thighs clenching, fingernails digging into him.

Finally, a little shriek, and her cunt pulsed greedily, hungrily around his hand. She flopped onto her back, limp.

He put on a condom he’d left on the bedside table, rolled on top of her, and filled her with a powerful, relentless thrust. He wanted to chase the pain and unease of their last conversation away. This was the only way he knew to do it, to lose himself in the heavy rhythm of his body jolting against hers, her gasping cries, his harsh breathing. Somehow he managed to wait for her climax again, and his own release followed a split second after, her hot pulsations prolonging his pleasure.

And then she burst into tears.

Duncan was appalled. She disentangled herself and curled up with her back to him, sobbing. He wrapped his arms around her from behind until her sobs quieted. She fell into an exhausted sleep.

He lay there with her for what felt like hours, until the pressure inside him built up to the boiling point. He crept from the bed, tucked the comforter around Nell, and got rid of the condom, then he slipped on some sweatpants and wandered into the living room. He felt scared, shell-shocked, and the ache of impending doom in his gut was growing. He went out onto the terrace and stared out into the endless skyscrapers while the chill made his hairs rise up on his naked skin. It was almost dawn. The city below would wake up soon. But chill or no chill, he just stood out there, staring. Thinking, and feeling.

He was losing her. He could feel it. He put his head into his hands, tried to think it through. The weirdness had started when he’d asked her that stupid, ill-considered question about marriage, kids.

Marriage. He examined the concept. Was that what she wanted? Because if it was, the more he thought about it, the more he realized that it wasn’t such a terrifying idea. It wasn’t actually so crazy, either.

He ticked off the positive aspects. Protection. He would have a God-given reason to stay stuck to her like glue, if they were newlyweds, and that was fine with him. Then there was work, too. If they were married, their relationship would not be fodder for rumor and scandal in the office. No one would have any right to judge or criticize them. He would have a further claim upon her undivided attention and expertise for his company. He could easily pay enough so she could quit her other work, and have more free time. Hell, he had plenty of money. How much he paid her wasn’t necessarily relevant, once they were married.

She was so smart and imaginative, he would never get bored with her, as he had with other women he’d dated in the past. Sex was an important element of marriage, and they certainly had no problems in that area. And he would be faithful. No question about that. At all.

He would wake up every morning and find her there, beside him. That gave him a wonderful, spine-tingling sense of rightness.

Yes, marriage was the logical culmination of a partnership that worked. It was a win/win situation. So logical, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before. He could hardly wait for Nell to wake up, so he could tell her what an excellent idea this was. He hoped it would make her feel better. That she would see that he was trying to meet her halfway, as far as he possibly could. And it was pretty damn far.

Marriage, for Christ’s sake. How much further could a guy go?

The cold ache in his gut had entirely vanished at the idea. He went back inside, with the intention of creeping into the bedroom, lying down beside her, and watching as she slept. Then he saw the eerie blue glow of a computer monitor emanating from one of the couches.

Nell sat there cross-legged, wrapped in one of his bathrobes, tip-pity-tapping on her laptop. She must have felt the breeze from the door, but she did not look up. She just worked on, utterly absorbed.

He must have stared for ten minutes before she took notice of him. Her smile was wan. “Hi. I woke up. Couldn’t get back to sleep.”

He stepped in. “What are you doing?”

“I had an idea for the last level of the game,” she said.

The freaking game was the last thing he wanted to talk about, but he wasn’t sure of a smooth way to shift topics and get from here to there. And a proposal of marriage had to be a segue as smooth as oil.

He swallowed, closed the door, strolled across the room toward her. “What’s the idea?”

Her voice was strangely businesslike. “As it is now, the player rescues the princess only if he garners sufficient points and collects all the magical weapons necessary to defeat the Sorcerer. If the player is clever and ruthless and forgets nothing, he gets the princess. It’s a very simple, banal, mercantile sort of exchange. It’s cold.”

The tension was back in his gut again. This was one of those dangerous conversations with undercurrents, where a phrase like “pass the butter” could blow up in his face and kill him. “Hardly simple,” he muttered. “You have to sweat blood to make it through all those levels.”

“I propose something different,” she went on. “These tricks should get the player through the Sorcerer’s defenses and to the door of the enchanted tower, but no farther. I propose one last barrier. To win the game, the player must make a leap of blind faith. Go against everything his senses and past experience tell him. To break the last spell, he has to leave his weapons and spells behind, and do something crazy. Dive headfirst into a pit of snakes. Jump into the mouth of a dragon. Walk into a wall of flames. He has to…to sacrifice himself for love.”

Duncan’s fingers bit into the top of the couch. She was still pissed. And fucking with his head. Brutally. He fought with his anger.

“I’ve been playing with a short text that could be inserted,” she went on. “Something like ‘only empty hands and a full heart shall pass through the wall of flames unburned’. This way, it’s not just cleverness that wins the game. It’s faith, and courage. And love.”

“It would make the game impossible to win,” Duncan said.

“That’s not true for everyone,” Nell replied. “Just for you.”

A muscle pulsed in Duncan’s jaw. “What are you saying, Nell? No symbolism, no bullshit. Could I have it in plain English, just this once?”

Nell wrapped her arms around herself, shivering. “I think we understand each other perfectly,” she said quietly.

He circled the couch and sat down next to her. This was probably futile, given her unapproachable mood, but he had to get it off his chest. “You’re cold,” he said, grabbing the afghan off the couch. He wrapped it around her. “I don’t want to talk about the game right now. We need to talk about us. I’ve been thinking.”

“Me, too,” Nell said quietly.

“I’ve decided that the best thing would be for us to get married.”

Dead silence greeted that statement. Her eyes were huge and startled. “What?” she squeaked.

Duncan cracked his knuckles uneasily. “I was thinking about the situation after you went to sleep. And I decided that—”

“You decided?” Her voice was deceptively calm.

Duncan paused, sensing a pitfall. “Well, uh, of course your agreement is crucial to the plan,” he said cautiously.

“So I should hope,” Nell murmured.

“After I explain my reasoning to you, you’ll see that it would be the best thing for both of us.”

“Oh, really.”

Nell’s voice sounded strange, almost strangled.

“Yes. Let me explain.” He presented his analysis, during which Nell was ominously silent. The chill in his gut was a lump of ice by the time he concluded his well-balanced, watertight, foolproof argument.

Nell tugged the afghan around herself and looked into his eyes. “Do you love me, Duncan?”

He closed his eyes, sighing. Aw, fuck. She had to say it. She just had to insist. “Goddamn it, Nell,” he snapped, “that’s not the point.”

Nell shook her head. “I think it is the point,” she replied. “In fact, I think it’s the only point.”

“Marriage is about partnership. Trust. The long haul. Not a bunch of stupid platitudes that don’t mean a goddamn thing! If I had you on staff full-time, we could—”

“Duncan, I’ve studied for years for my advanced degree. I want to teach literature,” Nell said quietly. “It’s what I’ve always wanted.”

Duncan threw up his hands in disgust. “You’re being deliberately difficult. Tell me what you’d make as a professor. I’ll top it.”

“If I wanted money, I would’ve gone to business school.”

“We’re straying from the issue,” he ground out. “We’re good together. If you would let go of your lofty romantic ideas—”

“Marriage is not a merger. Love is not a stupid platitude. If I was as detached and cool as you are, it might work. But I’m not.” Her voice faltered for a moment. “I’m in love with you,” she finished, softly.

Love. Jesus, all he wanted was to be honest with her, to be fair. Not to lie or manipulate her with falsehoods. And this was what he got. His chest felt like it was in a trash compactor. Getting squished, smaller and smaller, into something as cold and hard as a diamond.

Nell rewrapped the afghan around herself. “And the worst part of this is that I think you love me, too, but you can’t or won’t see it.”

“Don’t tell me how I feel. I’m not talking about feelings. I’m talking about real things, concrete things. Commitment, fidelity, protection, everything I have. And children, too, if you want them. I thought that if you cared for me at all, you’d be pleased.”

It took her a while to respond to that. “I don’t ‘care for you,’ Duncan,” she said, her voice small. “I love you. Greedy Nell. Always asking for more. And besides, feelings are real. Mine certainly are. What would it cost you to admit that you love me? Is it just a control thing? You have to have the upper hand? You can’t give in to a strong feeling?”

“They’re not necessary,” he retorted. “None of this drama is necessary.”

“This is about your father, right? You hated him for calling what he did love. You have to be his opposite. No matter what.”

That deep-froze him. “Don’t talk about my father,” he said.

The tone in his voice made her lean back, her eyes big.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I can’t marry you. Not on these terms.”

“I figured that out by myself, by context and inference,” he said. “I’m not as intellectually stunted and backward as you seem to think.”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” Nell snapped, dashing away tears. “It’s one thing to wait around for a lover to admit to loving you. It’s entirely another to wait around for a husband to do it.”

Duncan stared at her. “You would have waited a long time,” he said. “I’ve offered you more than I’ve ever dreamed of offering anyone. If it’s not enough, then there’s nothing more to be said.”

Nell straightened up, stiff and dignified. “I understand.”

A phone began to ring somewhere. He recognized the muffled ringtone of the cell he’d given to Nell. It was in her purse, which she’d left on the floor next to the couch. She made no move to get it.

He leaned over, fished it out, and checked the display. “Upstate area code,” he said, handing it to her. “Maybe one of your sisters.”

She stared down at the ringing phone in her hand, a perplexed frown between her brows, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.

That was his cue to get the hell out of the room. He walked back out onto the terrace, and pulled the sliding door firmly shut behind him. Letting her take her goddamn phone call in privacy.

Since her affairs were no longer any of his fucking business.