Authors: Sherryl Woods
Ironically, considering the depth of Mark's feelings, the still-raw emotions that talking about Alicia obviously aroused in him, Lindsay felt no sense of competitiveness. Sadly, what Mark and Alicia had shared was over now. Because of
Velvet Nights
, she could imagine what it must have been like for the
two of them. She could see the beauty of it and, having just begun to feel the first stirrings of a deep love herself, she thought she had some idea of the depth of his suffering when it had ended.
“What really happened? Was it the way it was in the book?”
“Pretty much,” he said curtly.
She touched him gently. “Would you rather not talk about it anymore?”
He hesitated, almost grasping at the reprieve she offered. “No,” he said finally. “You were right. It's time to get it out. I thought the book had done that, but obviously I was wrong.”
Lindsay waited and finally he went on.
“I was finishing up a manuscript one day. Alicia came into the den and said she was going skiing. She mentioned some trail that, if I'd been thinking about it, I would have realized was far too dangerous. She was good, but not that good. Unfortunately, I was so damned wrapped up in my work that I barely heard what she said.
“Sometime during the afternoon I began to get the strangest sensation that something was wrong, but I ignored it. I was on the last few
pages and they were flowing like crazy. I wanted to finish so we could celebrate when Alicia got back.”
He stood up and paced the room, prowling like a starving, half-crazed beast on a hunt, pain and anger written on his face, his lean body tense. Suddenly he slammed his fist down on a table, sending papers flying and tilting the lamp precariously.
“How could I have been so selfish, so damned blind?” he said, his voice raw and filled with self-recrimination. “If only I'd gone after her when I first had the feeling that something was wrong, maybe it would have made a difference.”
Lindsay recalled his comment a few days ago about learning to trust his instincts. Now it was clear why there had been such intensity in what had seemed to be only a casual remark. One missing piece of the puzzle fell into place.
“What happened?”
“She got lost on the trail, at least that's what they think happened. What had started out as a light snowfall turned into a raging blizzard,” he began, the haunted look making his eyes darker than ever, the words explaining
his reaction to her disappearance from the cabin. Yet another piece of the puzzle clicked into place.
“Everyone else had come back to the lodge, but Alicia had wanted to do one more run. No one could talk her out of it. She dared the others to come with her, but they refused. As soon as they got back to town, they came to tell me she'd gone back up. I practically went out of my mind. I was furious with her friends for letting her go, but I knew they couldn't have stopped her. Not once she'd made up her mind. I wanted to go after her, but the snow was so bad by then, the official patrols wouldn't let me. We waited and waited and with every endless minute that passed, I knew that her odds of coming back were diminishing.”
Mark's voice shook and he was barely controlling the sobs that shook his shoulders. “She died on that damn mountain, all alone.”
Lindsay put her hand on his knee and he took it in his own and held it tightly. This time it was her turn to share her strength with him.
“I left Switzerland as soon as they found her. I buried her back in Vermont so she'd be
near her family and then I bought this place. At first I was like a bear in hibernation. I refused to go out, to see anyone. Grace Tynan kept nudging at me until I finally pulled myself together. She didn't know what had happened, but she was determined not to let me hide away for the rest of my life.”
His lips tilted in a crooked grin. “That woman's like a nagging old mother hen once she gets something in her mind. One day, after all that pushing and prodding, I just woke up and realized that whether I liked it or not, my life was going to go on. That was the day I started living again. It was also the day I started on the book.
“
Velvet Nights
is Alicia's story. It was something I had to tell to save my own soul, but I don't want to see it on a movie screen, twisted into some sentimental mockery of the way it really was with us.”
Lindsay gazed into his troubled eyes and suggested softly, “You could make sure that didn't happen.”
He shook his head. “I could, but I won't. It's been five years now and it's time to put Alicia to rest. I knew that the minute I first saw you and realized there were new possibilities,
new feelings and that it was time I explored them.”
She nodded, understanding at last at least some of what had been happening between them, certainly understanding how he felt about
Velvet Nights
.
“I'll tell Trent there is no deal,” she said softly.
Their eyes met and held, hers filled with compassion and understanding, his filled with renewed lifeâand desire. Without a word being spoken, Lindsay went into his arms and offered him all of the love she had to give, more love than she'd ever thought herself capable of giving.
He held her cradled in his arms, his hands stroking tentatively, but building brushfires all the same. When his hand slipped under her sweater, his fingers warm and gentle against her already-burning flesh, her breast tensed with anticipation, the nipple hardening. When he touched it at last with a flick of his nail, an exquisite spiral of electricity shot through her.
Through it all his eyes never left hers, and when Lindsay wanted to look away, afraid to
let him see her vulnerability, her raw desire, a slight shake of his head stopped her.
“I don't want your pity,” he said softly.
“Pity is the last thing I'm feeling right now.”
“Are you sure?”
The question seemed to carry a double meaning and Lindsay's response was immediate and filled with certainty. “Yes. I meant what I said before, Mark. I love you.”
Her lips parted ever so slightly in invitation, and with a ragged sigh Mark took them, gently at first, nibbling, teasing, until Lindsay felt an aching need stir in her abdomen. When his tongue flicked across her lips then slipped inside her mouth like liquid silk rippling across heated flesh, her whole body shuddered and she clung to him.
“Oh, bright eyes, I need you so,” he murmured as his lips brushed across her cheeks, down her neck. His fingers continued to tempt and tease each breast in turn, the lacy fabric of her bra only adding to the delightfully pleasurable friction of his touch. When his hands moved on to roam over the curve of her hip, the length of her legs, her breasts felt bereft, though she hardly noticed because of
the new tension he was arousing wherever his fingers caressed.
She had never felt like this before, never known this magical wonder of feeling her body come alive from the inside, of feeling a heat that warmed like sunlight, then exploded into wicked flames that danced along her nerves. All of those unfamiliar yearnings she had felt from the moment she and Mark had met in the airport came into focus here and now in his arms, and she knew that he and he alone could fulfill every passionate dream that she'd ever had and tried so hard to deny.
She wanted to know this powerfully virile body that had drawn her into its forceful magnetic field. She wanted to touch every intriguing inch of rugged masculinity, to experience Mark's vitality as she had never experienced another man's. She wanted him to love her, to complete her in the mystical way that a man completes the woman he loves.
“Make love to me, Mark. Take me to your bed and make love to me.”
He shook his head, his dark eyes burning into hers. “No, love. Here. I want to make love to you in the firelight. Your skin glows like pearls in this light,” he said as he
reached for her sweater and slipped it over her head. Her bra, jeans and panties followed in a slow, deliberately provocative stripping that had Lindsay trembling. When his hands skimmed over her now, caressing and stroking, her body arched into his touch, demanding more and more intensity, seeking satisfaction without knowing exactly when or how it would come.
She reached for Mark's clothes, trying to unbutton his shirt with shaking fingers, but he captured her hand and stilled it, sucking gently, provocatively on each fingertip. “Not yet,” he whispered huskily. “Not yet.”
His eyes were dark as night, so dark a woman could lose herself in them had it not been for the little pinpricks of light that teased and taunted like guiding stars as his hands continued their erotic dance over her body. They glided slowly along her legs, paused intimately on her inner thigh and then, almost without warning, flicked across the tiny spot in which so much sensation seemed to be centered.
Lindsay's eyes widened at the contact and her hips began to move rhythmically as Mark's fingers played relentlessly across the
moist, sensitive flesh. As spectacular as the sensation was, there was an aching emptiness that cried out to be filled. “Mark, please. I want you.”
“Sssh. This is just for you,” he said, intensifying his touch until Lindsay was no longer able to protest. “Let yourself go, bright eyes. That's it. I want you to feel everything.”
Fire roared through her, exploding into a million colored lights as her body thrashed wildly beneath Mark's persistent fingers. There were no longer any thoughts of her one-sided vulnerability, no lingering hesitations about giving in to the all-consuming feelings. All rational thought was beyond her now as her body yielded itself to wondrous new sensations. It was only after the rippling waves of excitement calmed that she realized the extent of what Mark had given her. His eyes met hers and she saw that he knew exactly what she was thinking. What had she ever done to deserve a man whose one joy came in giving such pleasure? she wondered.
Lindsay turned to him then, and this time when she reached for the buttons of his shirt, he didn't deny her. She eased his clothes off
in the same slow, enticing way he had removed hers, her eyes drinking in the sight of him, all sinew and potent strength. She struggled with his jeans then hesitated tentatively over the removal of his briefs, struck by a sudden uncertainty that vied at the same time with the desire that raged deep inside her once more.
Mark lifted his hips and slid off the pants that had only barely concealed his throbbing masculinity. Instinctively Lindsay's fingers sought him, reveling in the satin smoothness that shielded a core like white-hot steel. Mark trembled beneath her exploratory touches, his breathing growing increasingly ragged. When he reached for her at last, there was no holding back. They were two people whose needs were evenly matched, whose desires were beyond control. He poised above her only briefly, his gaze holding hers. For the tiniest fraction of a second Lindsay felt a flicker of fear, but it was banished almost before it could register completely in her mind.
She waited expectantly for Mark's first urgent thrust, then felt a sharp sting of pain that vanished almost as soon as it had begun. She saw the look of surprise in his eyes, the hesitancy,
and deliberately arched her hips upward, drawing him into her, filling herself with him, reveling in the perfect fit of his body with hers. Slowly, they adjusted their rhythm and with each point and counterpoint, the tension built, coiling inside her like a spring, which once released would shake them both to their very cores. Mark's lips sought her breast and his tongue teased the hardened peak until Lindsay could feel the sensation clear down to the tips of her toes. Her fingers dug into his back, then slid down to his hips, pulling him more deeply into her until at last the spring snapped and her body shook with the explosiveness of the sensation.
Mark held perfectly still until her own shudders stopped, then he moved again and again, his muscles taut with tension until finally he, too, trembled, his body covered with a sheen of perspiration.
“I had no idea,” they both said in a sort of dazed wonder.
“Why didn't you tell me?” he murmured, still holding her in his arms, their bodies curved together side by side.
“After everything I told you, I thought you knew.”
“I suppose I should have guessed.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes. It matters.”
Lindsay's face fell. “Why?”
“Not in that way, bright eyes. I'm just glad I'll always be the only man you've ever had.”
“What does that mean?” she mumbled sleepily.
“Quiet, love. We'll talk about it later,” he promised, as she settled her head more comfortably in the crook of his shoulder and promptly fell asleep. It was a sleep filled with spectacular dreams, and Mark was at the center of every one of them. With a wildfire of desire warming her from the inside, she didn't even seem to mind that they were always surrounded by snow.
“M
arry me,” Mark suggested softly in the morning, his arms wrapped tightly around Lindsay, his breath whispering across her bare shoulder, his fingers delicately tracing the curve of her spine. “And if you say one word about this being so sudden, you're less perceptive than I thought you were.”
Lindsay's heart turned a somersault, and she wished with everything that was in her that she could say yes. Somehow over the past few days she had fallen deeply, passionately
in love with Mark Channing. She knew that with absolute certainty, had known it even before last night's tempestuous lovemaking that had bound her to him as irrevocably as the snare of a silken spider's web.
No man had ever made her feel as he had, as though the world were bright and clear and open to all sorts of new and exciting experiences to be shared. She had never known the joy of sharing before, never known what it was like to allow another human being to get so close that he seemed to be a part of her, seemed to know her thoughts practically before she spoke them aloud.