Seven

“You never did tell me where Ruby is.”

He shifted his long legs beneath the sheets and found a warmer spot next to hers. “You didn’t ask.” He butted his nose against her jaw.

“I did so.”

“You did I must have had my mind on something else.”

“All you said was that we were alone.”

“Good thing, too.” He chuckled before his mouth settled on hers for a deep, satisfying kiss. “I’m sure that hallway has never seen such excitement.”

She yanked on a chest hair, and he yelped. They laughed together, and when their laughter subsided he said, “Auntie left this morning to sit with a sick friend. She said she might not return until tomorrow. So,” he said, dragging out the word, “tonight we have the whole house to ourselves.”

“But we’re not using the whole house, only this bed.”

“That’s the general idea.”

Their lips met. The kiss was soft and sweet. His lips plucked at hers, and they responded. “I never imagined that I’d be with you this way,” she whispered against his mouth.

“I imagined it. A lot.”

“Well, actually I did imagine it. I just… Oh, you know what I mean.”

“I couldn’t imagine you this way.” He ran his hands over her hips caressingly.

“What do you mean?”

“I couldn’t imagine what your body was like beneath your clothes. I confess that one of my better-developed talents is being able to undress a woman with my eyes.” He frowned. “I couldn’t even begin to undress you, and it drove me nuts. I wanted to know what you were like naked.” His hands moved to her breasts and kneaded them lovingly. “I am delightfully surprised.”

Moving lower, he began loving her breasts with his mouth. Rana laid her hands on either side of his head. His hard jaw was getting bristly from his beard. It rasped pleasantly against her skin.

The rain continued through the night, and so did their lovemaking. Surely no two human beings had ever been more physically compatible. His slightest touch awakened a vibrant sexuality that she hadn’t known she possessed. They made love repeatedly. The mood and tempo varied, but his body never failed to bring hers to a pinnacle of sensation and satisfaction.

Gradually she was overcoming her shyness with him. At first she had been hesitant to initiate anything, even to touch him.

“Lay your hands on my chest,” he urged breathlessly when he surprised her by rolling her atop him. “Touch me. Please touch me.”

She did as he asked, though her touch was tentative. Then she felt the beating of his heart against her palm and she allowed herself to do what she had wanted to do many times. Her hands thoroughly explored his chest. Her fingers combed through the dense hair and investigated the nipples until he was gasping and writhing beneath her.

She could feel him, full and hard, against her middle, and she wanted to know him in the most intimate way. Moving aside, she knelt over him and touched him with her mouth. Trent uttered a hoarse cry. He wound handfuls of her hair around his fists. Her lips and tongue tested his strength delicately, until he could bear no more, and positioned her over him again.

And just when Rana thought there was no more to learn, he would introduce her to an entirely new erotic experience.

Only once during the night were they out of harmony with each other, and that was when he reached for the lamp on the bedside table.

“No!” She reacted violently, and drew the sheet up over herself.

His amazement showed. “But I want to see you,” he explained tenderly. “I want to see us together.”

“No, please, Trent. If you want me to stay, leave the light off.”

“I don’t understand.” He didn’t. Up until that moment, she had demonstrated a willingness for them to express their mutual feelings in any way. Why the aversion to having the light on? He took her in his arms. “You’re beautiful. I can feel how beautiful you are. Let me see you.”

She snuggled her face against his chest, loving the way its forest of hair felt against her cheeks and lips. “Please, Trent. I like it better dark. Please.”

She knew that her hair was tousled, wild, and abandoned, the way it had often been photographed. Her glasses were still downstairs in her purse. And though she had gained some weight, her body would look much as it did in print ads and commercials, because cameras added pounds.

Tonight was so special. He was loving her without any thought of her appearance. She didn’t want to spoil it by risking discovery now.

Regretfully Trent consented. Later he even found her aversion to having the light on amusing. “I didn’t realize you were so bashful.”

Rana knew he wouldn’t think so if he’d ever been behind the scenes at a fashion show. The haughty models strutted down the runways looking cool, confident, and unruffled, while backstage, pandemonium reigned. She had often been stripped even as she switched hats and earrings.

Other hands had dressed and undressed her as many times as she had herself. One couldn’t be self-conscious about nakedness and work with designers, seamstresses, and photographers. Their touches were so impersonal, soon she had ceased to be aware of them. Her mother had never been one to show any affection.

Perhaps that was why Rana had responded so urgently and rapidly to Trent ’s touch, she thought. Oh, yes, she must be starved for the loving touch of another human being. If he wanted to think her bashful, she would let him.

“Does it surprise you that I’m so shy?”

“Frankly, yes. Especially since you’ve been married.” He strummed her back for a few moments, then asked, “Can you tell me about that or is it too painful a subject?”

“It was, but it ended so long ago that sometimes I think it happened to someone else. I was fresh out of high school.”

“He was your high-school sweetheart?”

“Something like that.”

Actually, they had dated only several months before they got married. Patrick, like most young men, had been dazzled by her. But she had managed to break through the barrier of his awe, and she and Patrick had fallen into an idealistic, immature kind of Love.

Susan was already talking about a move to New York and planning how to coordinate Rana’s career with a few years of college. Rana resisted. She wanted a career, because she loved beautiful clothes and couldn’t imagine anything better than getting paid for modeling them. But she didn’t want a career orchestrated by her mother, a career that would exclude everything else, especially Patrick.

So she had talked him into a whirlwind marriage. It was a desperate attempt on Rana’s part to escape her mother’s clutches. When Susan heard their plans, she had been furious. But she was a relentless, cunning fighter. Instead of refusing to let them marry, she permitted it.

From the outset, she smothered the young couple, advising on this, arranging that, until Patrick felt useless and emasculated. The final blow to his ego came when Susan intervened with the personnel manager at a company where he had applied for employment.

Rana, admitting to herself that she had used him abominably, and knowing how unhappy their marriage was making him, had offered him a way out. He readily took it.

Six months after the wedding, the marriage ended in divorce. Rana and her mother moved to New York as soon as arrangements could be made. In the long run Susan got exactly what she wanted.

“He was very sweet,” Rana told Trent now. “Good and kind to me. But it was doomed from the beginning.”

“Why?”

“My mother was constantly butting in, and my husband wanted to live his own life.”

“Your mother? You’ve never mentioned any living relatives.”

“We’re not very close. Not any longer.”

“Are you close to anyone, Ana?” he asked, his tone of voice soft.

The conversation was getting too personal, and she didn’t want that. She looked up at him with a mischievous smile and tiptoed her fingers down his front. “Right now, I’m very close to you.”