There were burning candles and vases of fresh flowers scattered throughout the room.
The combination smelled wonderful, as intoxicating as the whiskey.
His eyes made a wide sweep of the room before stopping abruptly on Marcie. She was an angelic vision where she stood beside the king-size bed, which had already been turned down to reveal satin sheets the pastel color of the inside of a seashell.
Her peignoir was pale and silky. The shape of her body was outlined beneath it. Through it, he easily located the centers of her breasts and the delta of her thighs. She had taken down her hair. With candlelight shining through it, it looked like a halo surrounding her head.
But the look in her eyes wasn't innocent. Not by a long shot.
Mentally Chase groaned. She was making this out to be something special, a typical wedding night made for lovers.
"I thought you might like more champagne."
She indicated a silver ice bucket on the nightstand.
In it was an unopened bottle that she must have brought up ahead of time. There were two tall tulip-shaped crystal glasses standing beside it.
"No thanks," he said gruffly.
"All right."
This was no doubt where the bridegroom was supposed to seize the initiative. Moving stiffly, he crossed the room until he reached her. He knew he was expected to say something nice. "I like your… your thing." He gestured down at the nightgown.
"Thank you. I hoped you would."
A kiss was called for. Okay. He could handle that. He'd been kissing girls for decades.
Placing his arms around her, he drew her forwards—stopping short of bringing their bodies together—and kissed first her forehead, then her cheek, and finally laid his lips upon hers.
Hers parted invitingly. Her breath was sweet and clean. He experienced a flurry of curiosity.
Should he acknowledge it, gratify it?
Should he slip his tongue into her mouth? It would be the kind and considerate thing to do.
But no. No sense in taking this thing any further than it was required to go. He kept his lips resolutely closed and after a few seconds, raised his head. It had been about as dry, uninspired, and sterile a kiss as one could bestow. Yet his heart was knocking.
That erratic heartbeat forced him to admit that the emotion keeping him from intimately kissing her was fear—the cold, stark fear that once he started, he wouldn't be able to stop.
He'd had one taste of her today, and the essence had lingered on his lips for hours. If he indulged that sudden craving now…
Another thought suddenly occurred to him, more terrifying than the previous one. What if he couldn't get an erection? Even at his drunkest he had never failed to perform sexually.
Of all the women he had bedded, none could fault him when it came to physical preparedness.
Knowing Marcie as a friend might make a difference.
Dear Lord, he hoped not. The fear of failure paralyzed him.
Marcie must have sensed that he was having difficulty of some sort. Smiling tentatively, she crossed her arms over her chest and slowly lowered the thin straps of her nightgown from her shoulders, pulling them down her arms until she was bare to her narrow waist.
Her breasts were high and round and pale.
She had possibly the pinkest nipples he had ever seen. And the most sensitive. Because when she removed her nightgown and the air touched them, they shriveled and darkened to an even deeper shade of pink. They became very hard.
Chase's mouth began to water. He swallowed to keep from drowning. His body quickened behind the fly of his slacks and he felt a surge of relief.
Marcie let her nightgown slide to the floor.
Gracefully, she stepped out of the circle of fabric and faced him naked. Her feet were high arched and slender. Her long legs were almost coltishly thin, but well shaped. There was a definite flaring curve to her hips, but they weren't voluptuous.
What drew his eyes like a magnet, however, was the cluster of ginger curls between her thighs. It was a lush, wanton, feminine sight.
He touched it with the back of his fingers.
Springy. Alive. Alluring.
His veins exploded with raw desire. A tor rent of blood flowed into his groin.
That's when he realized he needed to rush this. Otherwise he was apt to explore every inch of her porcelain skin, take her nipples into his mouth, nuzzle that fiery cloud between her thighs.
He was liable to make a damn fool of himself over his good pal, Goosey Johns.
I "Lie down, Marcie," he whispered thickly.
Hastily he went around the room blowing out the candles, because if he tried this with the lights on, it might not work—and at that moment he desperately wanted it to work.
He removed his own clothing, fumbling in the dark, and slipped on a condom. When he lay down beside her, she moved into his arms willingly. She felt incredibly dainty and crush able as he moved on top of her and opened her thighs.
His entry was so hard and swift, he thought he might have hurt her, but she made no sound except for a long, serrated sigh when he began to move inside her.
No, dammit, no. I'm not supposed to like it.
He couldn't like it. Couldn't enjoy. Couldn't luxuriate. Had to hurry. Had to get it over with before it became habit-forming. Before he wanted to do it all night. Before he wanted to do it every night for the rest of his life.
He pumped feverishly. Gasping for breath, he ducked his head. His cheek accidentally grazed one of her pointed nipples. Turning his head slightly—just to help him get it over with quickly—he flicked it with his tongue.
That did it. It was over.
As soon as his head had cleared and he had regained his breath, he got up and groped for his clothing.
Retrieving it, he headed for the door.
"Chase?" He heard the rustle of the satin sheets and knew she must have sat up.
"My ribs hurt. I'll be tossing and turning all night. Don't want to disturb you," he mumbled.
He ducked out, closing the door behind him, feeling as if he had escaped from the most deadly, most delicious torture a man could endure.
Raising her head from the sink after bathing her face in cold water, Marcie gazed at her reflection in the mirror. It was a disheartening sight. Having silently cried most of the night, her eyes were puffy and red. Without the enhancement of cosmetics her skin looked washed-out and sallow.
She looked every day of her thirty-five years.
She asked her reflection how she could possibly have hoped to entice a handsome, virile man like Chase who could have any woman
he wanted. Even the tramp who had come to see him in the hospital had had a better chance of pleasing him than skinny, freckled Goosey
Johns.
Salty tears filled her eyes again, but she refused to submit to them. She lowered her body into the hot bath she had drawn. The soothing water eased the soreness between her thighs. His lovemaking had been quick, but it had also been hard and intense.
As she lathered her body she assessed it critically. Cupping her breasts in her hands, she lifted them, wishing they were heavier, fuller. She even considered surgery to enlarge them, but discarded the idea as rapidly as it formed. Big boobs were not going to make
Chase Tyler love her.
She despaired that nothing ever would.
It was a bone-deep despair that she had lived with for almost as long as she could remember.
Leaving the tub, she dried herself and began to dress.
Ever since grade school Chase had been her ideal, to whom none other compared. Along with everybody else he had called her Goosey, but somehow, coming from him it had never sounded cruel.
She had imagined that he used her nickname with a degree of affection.
Of course she was someone he would never have thought of dating. It was an unwritten law that class favorites never dated class geeks.
That would have been taking friendliness and
kindness too far.
Graduating from Milton Point High School with her love still unrequited, she had entered college with the hope of finding a boy among her classmates who would equal or surpass Chase Tyler. She had actively dated— college men didn't seem as bent on dating the beauty queens as high school boys—but she had entered graduate school without finding anyone to supplant Chase in her heart or mind.
It actually came as a relief when her parents left Milton Point and moved to a retirement community near Houston. No longer was she required to take trips home where she invariably heard about the romantic escapades of Chase and his brother or saw him in town, always squiring a beautiful woman.
When she heard that he had married, she cried for two whole days. Then, pulling herself together and pragmatically charting a course for the rest of her life, she decided that carrying a torch was one thing, but obsession was another. It was mentally unhealthy and emotionally demoralizing to pine for a man who didn't know or care that she was alive.
Soon after reaching that momentous decision, she launched her career in residential real estate. Within her first year she had the third-best sales record in the whole Houston metropolitan area. The following year she was number one and held that position for two more consecutive years.
She met the man to whom she would later become engaged. Following that debacle, she decided to begin her own agency, and to the
dismay of her parents and friends, she decided to establish it in Milton Point where her only real competition was a nonaggres-sive, family-owned firm that had been in business for so long, they'd become complacent.
She had been back in Milton Point for two years before Chase's wife had sought her services.
Tanya McDaniel Tyler had been lovely, inside and out. Marcie had been inordinately pleased to meet her. She felt better knowing that Chase was married to someone who so obviously adored him.
She had never seen them together, however. The hardest thing Marcie had ever had to do was go into the office of Tyler Drilling and shake hands with Chase as though he were nothing more than a classmate she hadn't seen in a long while.
He had pulled her into his arms and hugged her. She touched him, smelled him, and her heart had nearly burst. He seemed genuinely glad to see her. But he had kissed his wife and held her lovingly while Marcie's heart was breaking.
Then Tanya had died in the passenger seat of her car. While lying injured in the hospital, Marcie had prayed to God for an explanation.
Why had he done that to her? Why had he laid on her conscience the death of the woman whose husband she lusted after and loved?
She had vowed then that she would make up his loss to him.
And now, as she descended the stairs, she made that same pledge. She would do any thing to restore Chase to the vital man he'd been before the accident, even if it meant having him make love to her when she knew that only his sex organ was involved, not his mind, certainly not his heart.
He turned when she entered the kitchen.
"Morning." His eyes didn't stay on her for more than a millisecond before flickering away.
"Good morning, Chase. Did you sleep well?"
"Fine."
"You're up early."
"Habit."
"If I'd known you were up, I'd have been down sooner."
"It's okay. I've got the coffee started. Shouldn't be more than a few more minutes and it'll be ready."
"How are your ribs?"
"My what?" He turned.
She nodded at the bandage swathing his bare chest. He was dressed only in a pair of old, faded, button-fly Levi's jeans. Looking at them made her knees weak. The soft cloth molded to his shape, defining his sex. "Your ribs. You said last night that they were hurting you."
"Oh, yeah, right." Turning his back, he opened several cabinet doors until he located cups and saucers.
"They're better this morning.
So his excuse for leaving her bed last night had been a fabricated one. He simply hadn't wanted to sleep with her. Even though he had moved his things into the extra bedroom, she had hoped that once they had made love…
Speaking above the ache in her throat, she asked, "What do you like for breakfast?"
"Coffee."
"I don't mind cooking you something. Just tell me what you want."
"Nothing, really. Only coffee."
"Sit down. I'll pour it."
He sat on a stool at the bar. Several moments later she joined him there. They sipped their coffee in silence. Their eyes connected once, briefly.
Was this how it was going to be? Would they occupy the same house, share rooms, breathe the same air, have periodic sex, but live the lives of quiet desperation that Thoreau had written about?
"The sun's coming out again today," she commented inanely.
"Maybe it'll warm up."
"Maybe." After another teeming silence she asked, "What are your plans today?"
"I told Lucky I'd meet him at the office midmorning. He told me I didn't have to feel obligated to come in on account of its being, well, you know, the day following my wedding, but I told him it didn't matter…
Does it?" he asked after a brief pause.
"No, no, of course not." She hoped he wouldn't notice how shaky her smile was. "I intended to go to my office, too."
"Well, then, guess I'd better go finish dressing and get on my way." He set down his cup and stood up.
"Maybe you should go see a doctor today about your ribs."
He touched the bandage. "I might. This thing is bugging me. About time it came off."
While he was upstairs, Marcie sat staring into her cooling coffee and trying not to weep with frustration and disappointment. She had hoped that they would spend the day together, not necessarily in bed, as was customary with newlyweds, but getting to know each other.
She had entertained fantasies of his being so taken with her that he couldn't tear himself away, of their lying in bed all day, exploring each other's nakedness with eyes and hands and mouths, going without food and water for long stretches of time in which they appeased another appetite that was scandalously voracious.
That was a fantasy all right. He was leaving for work. It was business as usual. Just another, ordinary day. To his mind, his part of the bargain had been fulfilled. Reminded of that, she left the bar and went into the room she used as an office.