Authors: Mary Margret Daughtridge

SEALed with a Ring (29 page)

ON WEDNESDAY, JJ LEFT CARUTHERS AT NOON TO GO home to the Topsail cottage.

Lauren had finally called, full of apologies for having missed JJ's message. She readily agreed JJ could have a dog in the cottage, so JJ stopped by her grandfather's house to pick up Brinkley.

With her awareness that life was fleeting, and that no matter how hard she tried it could not be held onto, she kissed her grandfather good-bye. She still didn't like his methods he had used to make her see that Caruthers wasn't the whole of existence, but she couldn't argue with the results, temporary though she knew they were.

He kissed her in return. He said something he'd never said before. "Your grandmother would have been so proud of you. I'm so proud of you."

Once at the cottage, David walked Brinkley prior to settling him down, while JJ enjoyed the warmth of the sunny deck. The calendar had turned. People were beginning to say, "Christmas is just around the corner," but the deck of the cottage, facing south, captured all the heat of the sun. JJ slipped off her sweater.

She turned to smile when she heard David come through the sliders.

"Is Brinkley okay? You don't think walking him on the beach hurt him?"

"He's fine. I've given him his morphine, but I'm spacing doses further apart. I think in a couple of days, he'll be able to do without it."

In a couple of days, David would be gone. Her mind jumped to the future. But she would not be sad about what hadn't happened yet. She was absorbing a different message from the one she had learned at her parents' death. Everything could change in an instant. She had learned to be afraid of the future and to hold on with both hands to the most permanent thing she could find.

It was still true that everything could be lost in an instant. But that particular truth could also set one free.

She held out her arm, inviting him to come and stand beside her at the deck rail.

He carried her purple pashmina shawl, which he draped over her shoulders.

"I'm not sure I need this," she told him, touched at his care. "It's amazing how much the sun heats this deck even on the coldest days. I'll bet it's seventy degrees."

"You might need it." He stood behind her and pulled her back into contact with his front. "Are you warm enough?"

"Um-hmm."

He pulled her blouse from the waistband of her skirt. He ran his hands under her shirt and holding her against him, cupped her breasts.

"I want you," he said in that voice she had no defense against. "Here. Now."

"David, we can't. It's broad daylight."

"How far away is the pier?"

"It's almost exactly a mile."

"Do you see anyone on the beach between here and there?"

"No. But—"

He turned her in the other direction. "How about that pier?"

"More like three miles, I think."

"And…?"

Despite her rising excitement, she tried to force some steel into her voice, "I don't see anyone in that direction either. But that doesn't mean—" Her protest lacked a certain amount of conviction. He had only to touch her, sometimes not even that, for her body to begin to ready itself for him.

"Cottages on both sides are empty. We can't get much more alone than we are right this minute." He loosened a couple of buttons of her blouse. She understood the pur pose of the shawl. It preserved her modesty and covered the action of his hands.

"What if we never get this opportunity again?" He whispered against her neck. "You're getting wet, right now, aren't you? Just thinking about it."

She was. Her heart was pounding. She pressed her bottom into closer contact with him. Against her but tocks, she could feel his hardness through her skirt, through his jeans, calling for entry.

"Brace your hands on the rail," he urged. "That's right. Lean over. Move your feet apart."

Unhurriedly, as if the action were accidental, un considered, he drew up the back of her skirt. An errant breeze evading the barricade of the house cooled the backs of her thighs. She understood the purpose of the shawl now. If anyone were looking up from the beach— which she was glad there wasn't because there was still time to refuse, and she didn't want to—all they would

see would be the wide shawl draped from her shoulders to the deck.

He worked the silk of her panties over her high, round butt. They drifted down her legs to make a puddle of red lace around her ankles and the yellow stilettos she wore. She'd worn these shoes the day she had announced she wanted to marry him. He did appreciate this woman's sense of style. "Step out of them."

When she had, he gently folded up the back of the skirt to make the fine wool frame the treasure he sought. "Widen your stance a little more, Jane."

"You can see…"

"Seeing is part of it. You know that. Do you want me to tell you how pretty this is? Blushing for me? Glistening because you're turned on."

He ran his hands under her blouse. Unhooked her bra. She grabbed for her front with one hand. "No, keep both your hands on the rail." He leaned over her. He pushed the cups up, freed her breasts to drop their full weight into his hands. Plucked the nipples into hard peaks and then rolled them between thumb and forefinger. "Wouldn't you like to feel me in you while I do this?" He smiled at the inarticulate gasping reply. "I can't hear you. What did you say?"

"I said yes."

"Good."

He gingerly lowered the zipper of jeans that by now were far too tight. He had trained himself to put on protec tion one-handed. He was never more glad. It allowed him to keep one hand playing over her. The sight of his own hand touching her swollen folds, the slick dew covering his fingers, was almost enough to make him come.

David was a man who loved sex. If he numbered his fantasies, this would make the all-time top ten. Again that crazy déjà vu feeling, like an earthquake deep in the bedrock of his being shaking him awake. The feelings seemed to get more far-fetched and yet more real all the time. Impossible though it was, he knew the fantasy hadn't been about some nameless, faceless woman. It was JJ in the sun, and he had fantasized the right to have her in the daylight and open air.

Carefully he spread her with one hand and positioned himself with the other. He grasped her hips to stabilize her. Slowly, relishing every centimeter as her tight, hot velvet took him, he made fantasy real.

JJ dropped her head, her neck no longer able to sup port its weight. Her whole awareness was on the place where they were joined: the sense of fullness, of heat, of pressure. She knew what she was: a woman completely yielded to a man's possession. Out of control.

She not only let it happen, she gloried in it, and if she was honest, gloried in the edginess of being in the sun and open air, the risk of being seen. Caught.

Caught in what? Letting her husband make love to her? Daring, yes. Illicit, no, enjoying sanctioned sex.

Each thrust moved through her whole body.

"You're coming, Jane." Sometime in the last week, Jane had become his very private sex word, a name he only used when they made love.

God, she
was
. The walls of her passage squeezed with every withdrawing stroke. The crests of water made of light rose higher. She waited for the wave to break, to crash over her head, and still it rose higher. The waiting was unbearable, the intensity unbearable, the knowledge that when it came it would take every thing in its path, unbearable.

"That's so good," he praised.

"Harder," she said, determined to claim the blessing she had been given.

He covered her, his hands on her breasts as prom ised. His breath was a harsh rasp in her ear. She was encompassed, inundated, the tsunami finally meeting its promise of destroying everything. It took her, and she gave herself to the taking.

Her legs threatened to buckle. He was heavy. Still he took. Still she took. Of this moment she took all there was. His fingers dug into her hips. He plunged wildly. Into the sunlight he hurled a triumphant shout.

Hardly more able to stand than she, he circled her waist as her trembling legs gave way. She gulped great shud dering breaths. She was so limp he feared this time he had gone too far. But he knew his Jane. Was attuned to her, body and spirit, as he had been to no one before. He pushed her skirt down. He prayed a wordless prayer. And then his legs refused to hold them anymore. He heard the sound he had been waiting for. Her laughter.

He lowered them to the deck, and there they sat with their backs to the railing, legs splayed out in front of them, howling with laughter.

The sun slid further down the afternoon. The ocean whispered of eternity. A line of pelicans glided overhead riding the thermals created by the cottage roofs. They honked their rusty-hinge honks, unfazed by the doings of humans.

Brinkley woke and wandered to the sliders to look for them, puzzled that they were out and he was in.

"Admit it," JJ demanded. "Doesn't he look more in telligent now that his name is Brinkley?

On Thursday, she had a meeting with the man from the bank that handled their floor plan. When she was done, she told her manager she would be gone for the rest of the day. She and David walked Brinkley. They ate scallops. During the afternoon, the sky and ocean turned dark, gunmetal gray. Rain turned the boards of the deck dark.

As day turned to night, there was less and less to say, because there was more and more that couldn't be said. They made slow, careful love and fell asleep early wrapped in each other's arms.

On Friday, it was still raining when they got up. They ate the pancakes David fixed. They sat at the counter in the kitchen.

JJ cut her pancakes into smaller and smaller bites. It didn't help. They still felt like they lodged against the tight place in her throat with every attempt to swallow.

"When is Brinkley supposed to get his stitches out?" David asked.

"Tuesday."

"Tuesday?"

"That's what the vet said."

David looked confused, then whatever question he had, he let go. "Will you be able to manage him by your self? Maybe you'd better call Ham."

"I won't be keeping him. The rescue organization called. The woman who's been out of town will be back Sunday. She'll pick him up sometime Monday."

"You're going to let him go? Grady gave him to you."

"I trust them. They have a no-kill policy. They'll find him a good home."

"He has a good home. With you."

"No." She couldn't explain why she couldn't hang on to Brinkley. Couldn't make him into the sea anchor of her life to keep her from drifting. She was moving under her own power now.

She cut a piece of pancake into a smaller bit. "You have your last post-surgery appointment today?"

"Yes."

"Do you want me to go with you?"

"Why would I?"

His eyes, especially the left, had that tight look it got when he was in pain. She had learned not to mention it, as she had learned not to notice his occasional lapses. "I just don't think you should go alone. What if it's bad news?"

"I'll deal."

That closed that subject.

He petted Brinkley and told him to be a good boy. Short, prickly hair was beginning to come in around the dog's sutures. David ran gentle fingers along it.

"This has been good," David told her as she walked

him down the cottage steps to his car. "I have a lot to thank you for. Knowing you've got my back with Riley—it means as soon as I'm operational, I can get my life back."

Stay
, her heart said.

He didn't want her to say he wasn't ready to return to duty, and she didn't have the right. He had lived up to his part of their bargain and more. Caruthers was safe, and, because of him, she no longer needed to cling to it. She had found a freedom to move on—with Caruthers, and past it. Now she had to set him free to live the life he wanted. To regain the life he felt he'd lost. She wasn't part of that.

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