Forsaking All Others (12 page)

The camera fell against her tummy. “Over there!” she ordered, pointing.

“Where? What?” He played dumb.

She wagged a finger at the floor to an oblique square of morning sun. “Over there, quick! Just sit the way you are, only do it over there, and face the kitchen so your face is sidelit.”

He complied, smiling, sitting on the floor in the warm wash of sunlight, drawing his knees up, crossing his arms loosely over them. Allison lay on the floor before him, flat on her belly with her elbows braced on the floor, directing the tilt of his head in this direction and that. The natural window light illuminated the side of his face, put highlights on one side of his thick hair, lit the top of an ear, and left a solid line of shadow beyond the ridge of his forehead, nose, lips, and chin. She took two shots, then popped up, dragged a schefflera plant across two feet of floor, and ordered, “Now, with the shadows of the leaves on your face . . . but no smiles, okay? Turn a little more toward the window and give me that handsome seriousness and let the mouth speak of thoughtfulness.” The shutter clicked two more times, and her exuberant face appeared above the Hasselblad, a puckish smile on her mouth. “You’re stunning, Rick Lang, do you know that?”

The camera freed her and let her natural impulses bubble out. With it around her neck, she felt totally
uninhibited, released to speak what she felt. Only without the camera was she thwarted by the idea of getting involved with personal emotions.

“How about the basket chair?” he suggested next.

“Ahhh, perfect. Get in.”

He pushed himself up off the floor and plopped onto the cushioned seat while she directed the chair opening toward the light source with an acute instinct for shadow effect and camera angle. She peered down into the viewfinder, checked the composition, lowered the camera, and looked around. She bounced across the room to drag a potted palm over, knelt down, and framed the shot with a spiky frond, making sounds of delight deep in her throat when she found the composition to her liking.

When she’d satisfied her artist’s eye at that setting, she scanned the room, pointed to the French doors leading to the porch, and asked if he’d mind going out there where it was cold.

“What’ll you give me?” he teased. “I work by the hour, you know.”

She plopped a passing kiss on his mouth, hardly conscious of what she was doing, so caught up was she with the joy of photographing with the prized piece of equipment.

She framed him through the panes of the French door, adjusting the angle of the camera time and again
in an attempt to create a well-composed photo without hiding his features behind the crossbars of the window frames.

“Hey, hurry up!” he complained, his voice coming muffled through the closed door. “My nipples are puckering up.”

She laughed, snapped two quick ones, told him he could come back in, then admitted, “Mine, too,” adding impudently, “they always do when I get turned on, and your camera really turns me on.”

“Only my camera, huh?”

“I didn’t say that, did I?”

“Well, let me know when you want to indulge in a little puckering. Maybe we can work together on it, without the help of porch or camera.”

When she’d exhausted all the best possibilities the apartment offered for settings, she was still rarin’ to go. “How about doing some outside shots?” he suggested. “There’s a Winterfest going on at Lake Calhoun this afternoon, and I was planning to ask if you wanted to go over and fool around anyway.”

“Fool around?” she repeated archly.

“With the camera, of course,” he returned. “There’s all kinds of stuff going on over there. What do you say we bundle up warm and check it out?”

He was irresistible, and she
did
want a chance to get to know him better. And she
did
want to work with the camera a little longer. And she
did
so enjoy being with him.

“Why not?” Allison replied, jubilant at the thought of spending a whole afternoon with him without having to talk her emotions into a state of equilibrium because privacy offered him a chance to kiss or touch her.

S
HE
donned her disreputable bobcap and scarf, and thigh-high boots lined with fur and a hiplength jacket belted at the waist. From the trunk of his car Rick dug out an enormous parka. He let the hood flop down his back, but the wolf-fur lining, framing his chin and jaw, set off his masculinity to great advantage. Even before they got in the car, Allison snapped a shot of him, having adjusted the f-stop to compensate for the blinding brightness of the snow outside.

It was a dazzling day, as bright as their spirits as they drove the short distance to Lake Calhoun. The Winterfest was already in full swing when they arrived, the
activities taking place right on the frozen lake, which looked like a confetti blanket, its white surface dotted with multicolored wool caps and bright ski jackets. Wandering from event to event, Allison snapped random shots—two runny-nosed eight-year-olds angling for sunfish through a hole in the ice; the laughing face of a man who’d fallen onto his back like an overturned turtle during a game of broomball; a young married couple sculpturing an ice mermaid by wetting down snow and compacting it with mittens covered with plastic bags; a string of red-nosed youngsters at the finish line of an ice-skating race, their lips set in grim determination; a boy and girl kissing, unaware that Allison was snapping them because their eyes were closed; an ice boat with its orange-and-yellow sail furled by the breeze, its rider hanging over the edge at a precarious angle; Rick lying flat on his back, making an angel in the snow; the grand, old Calhoun Beach Hotel Building—which was a hotel no longer—standing across the road from the lake in majestic watchfulness while funseekers romped and played and totally disregarded the fact that the temperature was only twelve degrees above zero.

Rick brought hot chocolate from a stand that had also been on the ice. They sat on a snowbank, squinting through the steam rising from their cups, watching a judge measuring a ridiculously short pickerel with a
tape measure while a small boy looked on hopefully. Allison felt Rick’s eyes on her instead of on the fishing contest, and turned to meet his gaze.

“You’re the neatest girl I ever met, you know that?”

Flustered, she looked away and hid behind a sip of cocoa.

“Don’t hide, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. You’re game for anything—bundling up and clumping out here in this cold, taking pictures of stuff that to some would seem so ridiculously bourgeois they’d scoff at the suggestion of even coming here, much less recording the homey events on film.”

“It’s been fun,” she replied honestly, then braved a look into his eyes, adding, “and I’ve had a wonderful day.”

“Me too.”

For a moment she thought he was going to kiss her. With her heart already fluttering greedily in her throat, she suddenly didn’t trust her own common sense, so she put on a pained expression and informed him, “But my derrière is so damn cold there’s no feeling left in it.”

Abruptly he laughed. “How ’bout your nipples?” he teased secretively. “Anything happening to them?”

“None of your business, you dirty old lech.”

He licked his lips, gave her a suggestive head-to-toe scan, and grinned. “Like hell it isn’t.”

She hauled herself to her feet and reached out a
mittened hand to give him a tug. When he was on his feet, Rick bracketed her temples with gloved hands. Her heart went a-thudding in anticipation, but he only pushed her drooping bobcap up out of her eyes and teased, “Nice cap, Scott.” Then he kissed the end of her icy nose, bundled her up against his side, and hauled her with him, pressed hip to hip while they walked to the car.

Pulling up in her driveway sometime later, she moved a hand toward the door handle. His glove crossed over her arm. “Wait,” he commanded.

She listened to his footsteps crunch around the rear of the car, and a moment later her door was opened. She had to giggle at his gallantry when she was dressed in her urchin’s outfit, totally unflattering and unfeminine.

He followed close behind her as they climbed the stairs in slow motion. At the landing, when she aimed the key for the lock, he took it from her hand and opened the door for her, then dropped the key into her mitten. He looked into her eyes and once more pressed his palms to the sides of her head and pushed the bobcap back where it was supposed to be. But he left his hands on her cheeks this time and said into her eyes, “I want to come in.”

Her lips opened to say no, it was dangerous, their feelings were rioting too fast, they needed time to assess what was happening. But before she could speak he slowly lowered his mouth to hers and her heart fluttered
to life and sent quivers to her breasts. As the kiss lingered, he released her face, taking her in his arms to pull her against his bulky jacket.

She pressed her mittened hands against his back, drawing close and moving her mouth languorously beneath his, opening her lips to invite his seeking tongue. It was hot, wet, tantalizing, seductive, and it stroked away the memory of Jason. His hands roved down the back of her jacket, then underneath it. Spreading his hands wide, he gathered her close against him, spanning her icy buttocks with warm, wide palms.

His lips left her mouth. He bent his face into the warm hair at her neck, burrowing deep to find skin inside the folds of scarf. “Allison,” he murmured gruffly, “let me come in. I want to warm you up.”

You already have, she thought, delighting in the feel of his palms against that intimate part of her body. He drew back, deliberately lifting first the hem of his parka, then her jacket, recapturing her buttocks to pull her against the long ridge of flesh inside his jeans, to let it speak for him as he pressed its heat against her stomach. He undulated his hips, grinding against her while on her backside his hands asserted themselves and controlled her.

He kissed her with a wild thrusting of tongues, rhythmically matching the strokes of tongue and hip before jerking his mouth aside and begging in a raspy voice, “Let me come in, Allison.”

She knew what he was asking and was abashed to find she wanted to do his bidding, to invite him not only into her house, but into her body as well. But she pressed her hands against his chest, begging, “Please, Rick, please stop. It’s too soon, too sudden.”

“What are you afraid of?” he asked.

She swallowed, reached for his hands, and brought them between them, folding his palms between her own while looking deeply into his eyes.

“Me,” she admitted.

He drew in a deep, shuddering breath, put a few more inches between their bodies, and asked, “So you’d turn a man away hungry?”

“Is it supper you want?” She knew it wasn’t, not any more than it was what she wanted.

“I guess I’ll have to settle for it, if that’s the only way I can stay.”

It seemed a reprieve. She wanted him with her yet, and supper was a plausible excuse to keep him a while longer.

“I have a pizza in the freezer. How does that sound?”

“Like a hell of a poor second, but I accept.”

They moved inside, but when the door was closed and the lights snapped on, there was no denying that the sexual tension remained, as vibrant as before. She hung up their jackets and turned from the pursuit in his eyes, telling her heart to calm down. But it felt deliciously good, this business of being pursued. It was
beginning to dawn on her why Jason Ederlie had eaten it up so.

Allison was halfway across the living room when she was swung around abruptly by an elbow. “What’s the hurry?” he teased, swinging her against him, holding her loosely around the waist, leaning back so their hips touched.

“Are you about to extract payment for the use of your Hasselblad?” she asked, resting her hands on his inner elbows, striving to keep the mood light.

“Not at all. You can keep it awhile . . . unconditionally.”

“God, how can you let a camera like that lay around in its case all the time, then lend it out to some girl who . . .who . . .”

“Puckers up at the sight of it?” he finished. “Well, if you can’t make the girl pucker up at the sight of you, you do the next best thing, right?” His hand wandered to her breast to brush it testingly with the backs of his fingers.

“Rick, stop it. You came in here for pizza.”

“Did I?” But the humor fell from his face as he reached to take the back of her head with both hands and pull her hard against his mouth. She forgot caution and flung her arms around his neck, a hand twining into the thick hair above his collar as he made sounds of frustrated passion deep in his throat. Stars and suns and
moons seemed to flash across the darkness behind Allison’s closed eyelids while she let her tongue and hips and hands respond to the plea in his eyes. He tore his lips from hers. They buried their faces in each other’s necks, clinging, learning the scent of each other, the texture of skin, of hair, of clothing as his hands played over her hips, and hers over the taut muscles of his shoulders and back.

“Allison, this afternoon seemed like a year,” he ground out, his voice gone low. His hand cupped the back of her head, losing itself in her hair. “I swear, woman, I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

In an effort to control the body that threatened to burst its skin, she laughed—a throaty, deep sound that came out very shaky. “I think it’s called hunger pains. Let me put the pizza in.”

Reluctantly he released her, his eyes darkly following the sway of her narrow hips while she crossed to the kitchen, turned on the oven, and opened the freezer door. He turned away, unable to watch her and retain control. He ambled to the component set and switched on the radio, wandered aimlessly about the living room to find himself once again drawn near the kitchen, his eyes riveted to her backside while she leaned over to slip the pizza into the oven. The back of her jeans was faded to a paler blue in twin patches just below the pockets. His eyes roved over them and he inhaled a
deep, shaky breath before letting his eyelids slide closed. He ran a palm down the zipper of his jeans and pressed it hard against his tumescence.

When he opened his eyes again, she was facing him. Her cheeks lit up to a fiery red, and she bit her bottom lip, then swallowed hard.

“It’s no secret,” he admitted gruffly, “so why pretend? I’ve spent the entire afternoon thinking about one handful of warm breast in the early morning when I came here today, and somehow it just hasn’t been enough.”

She backed up against the oven door, reaching behind her to grab the handle in both hands to steady herself. Her face was a mask of uncertainty, and her breath fell hard and heavy from her chest.

“Rick, I’m no virgin,” she admitted, abashed, yet facing him squarely.

“Neither am I. So what?”

“I’m a woman, and we’re the ones who have been taught since puberty that it’s up to us to control situations like this. But I feel like I’m losing control, and I don’t want you to think I’m easy.” She suddenly covered her face with both hands and spun around, afraid to face the hour of reckoning she knew was at hand.

How long did she think she could play with fire? How long did she think she could string along a healthy, virile, and willing twenty-five-year-old man? And what
was she going to do now that she’d backed herself into this corner?

“Rick, you were right, I’m scared.”

“Of what?” he asked, close behind her. “Of me?” His hand touched her hair, smoothing it gently, without the slightest hint of force. “Allison, look at me . . . please. Don’t hide from it. It’s nothing to be scared of.”

She turned at the gentle pressure of his fingers on her neck and lifted quavering eyes to his. A moment later her voice came, shaky, unsure, doubtful. “I don’t think I like being a woman in this . . . this liberated age,” she admitted. “I’m not very good at being a . . . a casual lay.”

His hands bracketed her jaw, lifting her face so he could look deeply into her eyes. A thumb stroked the hollow of her cheek. “Thank God,” he said softly.

She lunged against him, turning her cheek upon his chest, squeezing her eyes shut, wrapping her arms tightly about his sides. “Oh, Rick, what happened to the days when a man and woman went to the altar as virgins and learned about each other in their wedding bed and stayed in it for seventy-five years, forsaking all others? That’s what I’m afraid of . . . It’s not there anymore!”

She could hear the steady thrum of his heart beneath her ear, then the deep rumble of his voice as he spoke reassuringly. “Allison, I don’t care if there’s been
someone else. It doesn’t change how I feel about you. What you are now you wouldn’t be if you hadn’t lived your life as you have so far. Does that make any sense?”

“Nothing makes any sense when I’m near you. I try to think clearly, but everything goes blurry. The only time things aren’t blurry is when I’m behind the camera. Then things are clear, uncomplicated, I can understand them. If I could . . . could turn a focus ring on my life and bring it into focus as easily as I can a picture, I’d feel I had control of my life.”

“And if you let your defenses down with me, your life goes out of control?”

“Yes!” She pulled back, looking up at him with haunted eyes. “Don’t you see? It’s like turning it all over to you. That’s what scares me.”

“I don’t want to control your life, Allison. I want to make love to you.” Gently he drew her near, raising her chin while he spoke.

She studied him, wanting to believe but afraid to. “They’re both the same thing,” she said shakily.