"There’s a reason."
"But we have to talk…"
His hands traveled down her back, pressed her to him. She sighed when his hands slipped between them, to open the buttons of her blouse.
"Casie?"
Warmth came in waves. "Hmm?"
He nuzzled her mouth open and kissed her thoroughly, deeply, with passion. "Shut up and let me love you."
Acasia’s eyes drifted closed. Yes, she thought. Just for a little while. Yes, please.
T
HE TREMORS STARTED in the center of her and washed outward, then reversed, whirlpooling inward, drowning her in sensation. Her fingers twisted in the silky sheets of Cameron’s bed, tearing them from the mattress.
"Casie, look at me."
Acasia opened her eyes to see him, gasping when he plunged and stiffened, threw back his head on a guttural groan, and emptied himself into her.
I love you, she thought, but all she said was, "I’m hungry."
Cameron chuckled. "A woman of many appetites, are we?"
"I may be, but you’re not, fortunately."
Cameron’s chuckle became a full–blown laugh. "I’ll second that. Okay, let’s find you some food."
"I’d be forever grateful." She rolled her hips upward and tightened around him, and Cameron nuzzled her mouth.
"I’ll take you up on that promise later." He rolled off her and went to retrieve a pair of gym shorts from his dresser, sliding open two of the side–by–side drawers, emptying them of sweaters, socks and underwear. "You can have these until we can arrange for a chest for you."
Warily, Acasia crawled down the bed until she was beside him. "I didn’t bring that much with me, so don’t go to any trouble."
"It’s no trouble. Trust me."
Lightly Acasia dusted a finger through the items on Cameron’s dresser top, her gaze shifting from one drawer to the other. "I do, but—"
"But sharing my dresser is a bigger step than sharing my bed, right? I’m serious, Casie. You’ve had a problem all week with me trying to give you some space in my life. It’s as if you think that if things go sour I might leave fingerprints in your life—and if things don’t go sour, God only knows what I might expect from you in return."
"Maybe," Acasia admitted, not as quick to run from facing this side of herself as she would have been a week ago. "And maybe it’s just that we don’t know how long I can stay, and if I have to leave fast… I’m used to living out of my bags, Cam."
"Moment to moment. That’s how you face life, isn’t it, Casie? Everyone’s entitled to live for the future but you."
"What did you think, that a few days and a couple of drawers would automatically make me believe in fairy tales again?"
"You mean you ever did?"
Acasia glanced across the room at the bed, at the intimacy of the love–tossed sheets where sharing happened as a matter of course, and where the future was a fairy tale she could almost see. "Yes."
The simple honesty in the look that went with the answer rocked Cameron, shook him to his toes. He cupped her cheek. "Sometimes you say the damnedest things." He kissed her gently, and Acasia sighed and moved into his embrace. "You’re so tough one minute and so vulnerable the next. What am I going to do with you, lady?"
"Love me, Cam…."
It took a while for them to find their way to the kitchen. When they did it was only because Acasia’s stomach began to loudly protest the long absence of food—and because Cameron took a firm grip on himself and left Acasia in the shower.
When she came down, he was at the stove, stirring something in a pot.
"What is that?" she asked.
"Oat bran."
"Oat what?"
"Oat bran. You know, hot cereal—full of fiber and vitamins, not as gooey as oatmeal. Put a little butter and wheat germ on it and
mmm–mmm
! Good stuff. Healthy." Cameron picked up the pan and offered it to her. "Have some?"
Acasia opened the refrigerator and poked around until she found the leftover pizza she was looking for. "Are you nuts? It smells like cooked sawdust."
"Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it."
"I think I’ll knock it now, thanks, and avoid the rush."
"Cute. You don’t hear me commenting on your breakfast, do you?"
"What’s wrong with my breakfast?"
"It’s congealed."
"It’s not congealed, it’s pizza."
"Whatever it is, it looks disgusting. Why don’t you at least heat it up?"
"Because I like it cold."
"You would."
"You’re still steamed about that shower, aren’t you?"
Cameron shuddered. "‘Steamed’ isn’t the word I’d choose for that frigid stuff you call water."
"If you’d asked before inviting yourself into it, I’d have told you I like cold—"
"I know, I know… cold showers, hot climates and congealed pizza."
"And you."
"Some company I’m in."
Acasia grinned and moved closer, stretching her arms around his neck. "You chose it."
Cameron smiled. "So I did." He pulled her to him.
"Your oat bran’s burning, buddy."
"So am I, lady. So am I."
* * *
There was sound, always sound: crickets calling in the fields; boots catching and tearing at the long grass or crunching on gravel as Acasia and Cameron stepped onto the road. Peace was present here, fresh, clear as glass.
Jet streams trailed across the sky, a jolt of white against an expanse of clean blue that first drew Acasia’s attention, then a pleased laugh.
"What?" Cameron asked.
"I’ve spent so much time working in the dark, I forget how blue the sky gets sometimes. There are too many things I haven’t looked at in a long time."
Cameron tucked her into his side. "I guess we’ll have to remedy that, won’t we?"
He kissed her as they walked, and Acasia turned to meet him, pliant, willing.
Their days together had been so good; they had fallen into a rhythm as natural as breathing. They woke, showered and breakfasted together, then tended to their separate businesses agendas, met for lunch and either returned to work or spent the afternoon relishing one another’s company. Acasia was in daily contact with Futures and Securities, but, so far, things both within and without Rhiannon’s borders had remained quiet. The trail to Byrd’s killers, who were presumably Dom’s men, was getting cold, and that made her uneasy. She was beginning to want things resolved so that she could make some plans, go back to work outside Rhiannon, make promises–to–keep to Cam.
She was still restless in his house.
It didn’t fit her; she didn’t fit it. Despite his growing insistence on giving her space in it, she felt like a visitor who didn’t want to leave any evidence of her visit. No good guest ever did. She didn’t even feel comfortable taking books off the shelves or rearranging the pillows on the library couch. She felt as she had when, as a child, she’d been left to visit indefinitely with one or another of Simon’s friends. She felt as if she were intruding on some inner sanctum where she didn’t belong. Though she wouldn’t have risked admitting it to herself, Cameron was filling an empty space in her life. She wanted to nest. She needed a home, one of her own making.
Cameron felt her thinking and turned her toward him for a deeper kiss. There was an extra jolt that went with kissing her out here in the open, an electric charge that came with laying public claim, with being claimed. He eased himself out of the kiss, pulling back far enough to watch Acasia’s lazy eyes find him, focus and smile with secret knowledge. He wanted her. Body, mind, heart and soul, he wanted her.
"Come on," he said, releasing her. "There’s something I haven’t shown you yet."
Three–quarters of the way up the mountain, along a rough road hewed from among the trees, stood a cabin, apparently abandoned, though relatively new. The triple–paned windows still had the manufacturer’s stickers stuck in their corners; the porch was layered with wood shavings and sawdust; the door had no handle or knob, only a padlock, for which Cameron produced a key.
"What is this place?" Acasia asked, stepping inside after him, then stopping in a shaft of sunlight to watch dust particles dance and settle. The cabin boasted a single large, deep–ceilinged room with a sleeping loft and a row of cupboards that jutted a few feet into the room to mark the kitchen. There was a sink there, but no doors on the cupboards, and an area had been laid in the center of the cabin for a wood–burning stove but was, as yet, sans stove. A fieldstone fireplace cozied up the living area. Dust and sawdust lay everywhere.
"Welcome to the only project I ever started that I haven’t finished," Cameron said with a broad sweep of his arm.
Acasia breathed deep and sneezed dust. "Why not?" Without awaiting an invitation, she prowled from window to window, lifting locks and turning cranks to let in air. She brushed each sill free of dust, then sneezed again and moved on. When she was done, she stood in the center of the room and shut her eyes to feel the wind flow through. This was right; this was home. This was what her imagination pictured when it dared to picture anything—openness, seclusion, security. A place to hide and relax and belong. A place, she suddenly remembered, not unlike the home her mother had provided until she was three. "Why isn’t it finished? How can you just let it sit?"
Her tone was incredulous, and Cameron viewed her with surprise, catching his first glimpse of a need he’d never realized she felt, grasping, for an instant, what he’d been unable to lay a finger on down below: she didn’t fit in there as she did here. "I guess I just… got too busy."
He watched her shake her head in disbelief, then turn to mount the stairs to the loft. There was something incredibly sensuous in the way she dragged a hand along the banister at the top, caressing the wood as she moved, and Cameron felt the stab of an unfamiliar emotion. He’d brought Acasia here for privacy, simply to lie and love with her, not to find a rival for her affections. He was jealous of the cabin.
A few crude phrases directed at himself accompanied this realization. He missed seeing Acasia wander back downstairs and approach him. Her hands slid beneath his sweatshirt and left hot fingerprints on his skin and her tongue was moist in his ear. Cameron’s lips sought her neck, and his body stirred traitorously.
He no longer wanted to do this here.
He wanted her, but somewhere else, where he could have her to himself for a little while longer. Until he could be sure of her.
Acasia’s fingers worked the buttons of his shirt with undeniable familiarity. With the same familiarity, Cameron’s tongue sought access to her mouth.
Damn it all, he didn’t want to do this. Not here. He didn’t want to share her.
"Thank you," she whispered. "I need… I like this place. It fits. I fit. Here…" She bent her head to kiss his throat. "There…" Her mouth moved to fit the V made by the open buttons of his shirt. "Everywhere." She raised her head so that her tongue could trace his lips. "Always."
Love consumed jealousy, let Cameron return kiss for kiss, touch for touch. Acasia bent, taking them both to the floor, and all Cameron wanted was to feel her beneath him.
* * *
The cabin drew her like a homing pigeon to its roost. It became her haven, a private nook where she could escape everything: doubt, need, fear—and Cameron. It demanded nothing from her but the kind of physical labor she understood without thought. She demanded nothing from it but solitude. For the first time since she was seventeen, she lost herself somewhere, let herself dream.
Every minute that she wasn’t working or with Cameron, she was up the mountain working on the cabin. She swept it out, aired it, dusted it, took the manufacturer’s stickers off the windows, then washed them inside and out. She fitted and hung the cupboard doors, and she used her imagination. In the corner she pictured as most likely to suit Cameron’s uses, she set a drafting table, with shelves on the wall beside it. For herself, she fitted a window seat under the front window, where she could best see Rhiannon. When she looked at Cameron across the dinner table each night, she glowed.
She didn’t talk to Cameron about the cabin, though, instead hoarding this last bit of independence for herself.
He smelled the sawdust in her hair and guessed what she was doing, but didn’t ask her about it. At the same time that he found himself bothered by the fact that she didn’t ask him to help her with the cabin, he understood her desire for private time, private space. The more natural it became to expect her continued presence in his life, the more he craved these things himself.
Paradoxically, the closer they grew, the more distance he wanted between them. The more time they had together, the more separation seemed to become inevitable. He almost wished it would happen so that they could get it over with and go home. Or go on.
He looked down at Acasia, sleeping lightly beside him. He really wanted this to go on.
* * *
Three days later, first light was gray in a sky laden with clouds.
Staring at the light through the half–open curtains, Acasia stretched and plucked her watch off the nightstand. 5:00 a.m. Why was 5:00 a.m. always the hour her thoughts stirred and forced her to face them?
On the other side of the mountain thunder grumbled, and she shrank from it reflexively, back into the warmth that was Cameron. He shifted in his sleep, accommodating her, positioning his arm more securely about her waist, and Acasia felt the familiar glow of awareness buzz through her. For two weeks they’d shared his bed, his rooms, his life. Two weeks, and he was becoming a habit as necessary as breathing. Fourteen days, and she sometimes didn’t remember who she was anymore. Sometimes she looked out at the mountains and forgot she’d ever been anywhere else, forgot how fragile
now
was, how easily she could lose her place here, lose Cameron. Not remembering was dangerous. It could make her complacent, careless. Carelessness was the key to loss. And she badly needed to stay in contact with who she was, to know the woman who peered back at her from the morning mirror…
Even during the too–frequent moments when she didn’t like that woman very much.
The thoughts poured on, disrupting her attempts to return to sleep. Carefully she moved Cameron’s arm, scooted to the edge of the bed and swung her feet to the floor. If she lay here any longer listening to her thoughts she would become prey to the fear that always seemed to lurk underneath them. She leaned toward the end of the four–poster where she’d hung her shirt the night before, and behind her Cameron stirred, reaching for her.