"No." For the first time that morning his gray eyes connected with hers. He had left the house long before she'd gotten up. "We need to talk, Marcie."
A sharp pain went straight through her heart and she recognized it as fear. He looked and sounded so serious. He had never come to her office before. Unless it was absolutely neces sary, he rarely even called her while she was there.
Only something extremely important and imperative would bring about this unprecedented visit. The only thing she could think of was that he wanted to back out of his commitment.
"Sit down, Chase."
She indicated the short sofa recently occupied by Ralph and Gladys Harrison. He dropped to the edge of the boldly striped cushions and sat with his knees spread wide, staring at the glossy white tiles between his boots.
Marcie returned to the chair behind the desk, feeling that she needed something between them to help blunt the blow he was about to deliver. She laid the tulips on the desktop. Getting them into a vase of water wasn't a priority just then.
"What do you want to talk about, Chase?"
"Last night."
"What about it?"
"I didn't say much afterward."
"No, but what little you said was very concise.
You certainly got your point across. You said, 'Well, you came twice, so now you've got nothing to complain about.' "
"Yeah," he said, releasing a deep breath around the word. "That's exactly what I said."
He lowered his head again. Around the crown of his head his dark hair grew in swirls.
She wanted to touch them, tease him about their boyish charm, play with them. But touching him seemed as remote a possibility now
as casual conversation between them had been the night before.
Having delivered his hurtful line, he had gotten up, retrieved his shirt and sweater, and gone straight upstairs to his bedroom.
More slowly, Marcie had collected her things, then retreated to her own room. She hadn't seen him again until now.
"Marcie, we can't go on like this anymore."
He raised his head and paused as though expecting her to respond. She remained silent and expressionless. If she tried to speak, she knew that both her control and her voice would crack.
"We're like two animals in a cage, continually competing, constantly tearing at each other. It's not good for me and it's not good for you."
"Don't presume to tell me what's good for me, Chase."
He swore. "Don't get your back up. I'm trying to approach this reasonably. I thought— hoped—we could talk this out without tempers flaring."
She clasped her pale, cold hands on her desktop. "What do you want to do? Just please say what you came to say."
"Sex shouldn't be treated like a contest."
Her only response was a slight nod of assent.
"Our wedding night, the first time we made love—"
"We didn't make love that night. It was impersonal. If you had rubber-stamped my forehead, it couldn't have felt more official."
"Well, thanks a lot."
"You know it's the truth."
He pushed his fingers through his hair. "I
thought you promised not to get riled."
"I promised no such thing." If he was going to dump her, make her a laughingstock in front of a whole town that had always found
Goosey Johns amusing, she wished he would stop *footing around and do it.
"Would you just sit quiet and listen?" he said testily. "This isn't easy, you know."
He had his gall. He had come to weasel out of his marriage to her and expected her to make it easy for him. "Just tell me straight out, Chase."
"All right." He opened his mouth. Shut it.
Stared hard at her. Looked away. Gnawed on his inner cheek. Moistened his lips. "For starters, I think we should start sleeping together."
If her chair had suddenly bitten her on the behind, she couldn't have been more stunned.
Somehow she kept her astonishment from showing. But she held her breath so long that she became dizzy and covertly gripped the edge of her desk to keep from collapsing.
"And I don't mean just sleeping together in the usual sense. I mean, sharing a bedroom, living like a real husband and wife."
He sent her an uncertain glance, then left the sofa and began pacing along the edge of her desk. "I gave this a lot of thought last night, Marcie. Couldn't sleep. What I said after, you know, well, that was a spiteful thing to say. I felt like hell afterward.
"It occurred to me that we've been playing sexual one-upmanship. Driving each other crazy every Sunday afternoon. That's silly.
On our wedding night, granted, I took you with no regard to what you were feeling. I think I even hurt you." He stopped pacing and looked down at her. "Did I?"
Lying, she shook her head no.
"Well, good. That's something. But anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah. Then last night when, we got home, you seduced me. Pure and simple,
I was seduced. You asked for it and…
and you got it. When you, uh, touched me, I
could hardly hide the fact that I wanted you.
And Marcie, you were, well, uh, you were very wet, so I know you wanted me too."
He ran his palms up and down his thighs as though drying the nervous perspiration off them. "We've always gotten along. We were friends in school. Only since we've been married have we been at crossed swords with each other. Sometime last night in the wee hours, I figured out why."
Moving to the window, he slid his hands into the rear pockets of his snug-fitting jeans.
"There's this chemistry between us. I feel it.
You feel it." He glanced at her over his shoulder.
"At least I think you do."
Her mouth was arid. Again she nodded.
He turned back to gaze out the window.
"So I figured that we're being dumb by fighting this chemistry. We're consenting adults, living in the same house, legally married, and denying ourselves the main bonus of mar riage. I think we should stop that nonsense and give in to it. I mean, why not?
"Okay, so we agreed weeks ago to keep this a chaste, in-name-only marriage. I know that.
But hell, it's driving me friggin' nuts, and if last night is any indication, you haven't enjoyed doing without either. I mean, you were as hungry for me as I was for you. I've got the claw marks on my back to prove it."
When he came around, she dodged his incisive gaze. She was glad that she wasn't required to speak because she still wasn't able to. Apparently Chase had memorized what he was going to say, and he intended to say it all before he stopped to get her response.
"You know why I married you, Marcie. I
know why you married me. We're both intelligent.
I like and respect you. I think you like and respect me. We had some pretty good sex last night."
She raised her eyes to his. This time, he averted his head.
"Okay, some very good sex," he amended.
"I've been sexually active for a long time.
Even since Tanya died. Sometimes that was the only way I could forget…"
He paused, rested his hands on his hips, hung his head as though reorganizing his thoughts, and then began again. "Anyway, I
don't want to dishonor you by going to another woman. Besides, I was taught that being unfaithful to your wife is about the worst sin you can commit." He looked at her soulfully.
"But I can't go for months at a time without it."
She indicated her sympathetic understanding with another nod.
"I don't want it to be a competition, either, where we score points against each other. Our sex life can be an extension of our friendship, can't it? If we work on being compatible in bed, I think we'll be more compatible in other areas. We know it doesn't work the way it's been going. Maybe we should give this other way a try."
He waited a moment, then turned to face her. "Well, what do you say?"
"Hi."
"Hi."
With shining eyes and a shy smile Marcie greeted Chase at the front door of their house. She still couldn't believe the turn of events that had taken place in her office earlier that day. Her arms bore bruises where she had pinched herself throughout the day to make sure she hadn't been dreaming.
Apparently she hadn't been because now
Chase bent down and kissed her cheek. It was an awkward kiss, more like a bumping of faces together.
After his lengthy speech they had agreed to erase the angst of their first month of marriage and start again, not only as friends, but lovers. There was only one thing he had wanted assurance of, and that was that she was taking contraceptives. Without equivocation she had assured him she was.
"How long have you been home?" he asked as she helped him out of his jacket.
"Awhile. Is it still raining?" She dusted drops of water off the sheepskin as she hung it on the coat tree.
"Sprinkling. Something smells delicious."
"Chicken enchiladas."
"Yum. Did you get another phone call from the kook?"
"No."
"Then why'd you take the phone off the hook?"
Her blue eyes sent him a silent but eloquent message.
He swallowed hard. "Oh."
"Would you like a drink?"
"Sure."
Neither of them moved.
"Are you hungry?" she asked.
"Very."
"Are you ready for dinner?"
No.
Upstairs—they never remembered getting there—he kissed her repeatedly, with passion and heat. His tongue was questing. He used it to explore. Like a gourmand, he sampled and savored her mouth, as though unable to decide which texture and flavor he liked best.
Articles of clothing seemed to melt away from their bodies. When they were both naked, they embraced long and tightly for the sheer animal pleasure of touching skin to skin, body to body, male to female. She was soft where he was hard and smooth where he was hairy, and the differences enthralled them.
He sat down on the edge of the bed and drew her between his knees. His stare alone aroused her breasts. They crested. They ached to be touched. He didn't.
But with his fingertip he traced the shadows they cast on her belly. Like a child who would be chastised for coloring outside the lines, he carefully followed the curving outline of the silhouette and paid close attention to the projecting shadows the flushed nipples made.
Watching his fingertip move with such precision over her flesh, Marcie moaned. She drew his head forward and pressed her nipple against his lips, which opened to enfold it.
The heat, the wetness, the sucking action he applied, was so piercingly sweet it was almost painful.
Parting her thighs with his hand, he gently massaged the swollen, pouting lips of her sex.
Marcie gasped in ecstasy as his fingers tunneled into her moist center. Her tummy quickened.
An electric tingle shot through the tip of his tongue into her nipple and from there into her womb. She softly cried his name.
He lay back on the bed, pulling her over him, and she managed to impale herself upon him in time for him to feel the gentle contractions that seized her. They rippled through her endlessly it seemed before she realized that some of the surges belonged to him.
Moments later, sated, she lay upon his chest.
The upper half of it was hairy. The lower half of his torso was still prickly where the hair hadn't completely grown back. She loved it all.
Her thumb idly fanned his nipple while she listened to the strong beats of his heart as they gradually returned to normal. Then another sound caught her attention—a low grumble from his abdomen.
She raised her head and looked inquiringly into his face.
"Now I'm ready for dinner," he said.
Chase did something then that he hadn't done in bed with a woman for over two years.
He smiled.
During the weeks that followed, Chase was frequently caught smiling. Some days he completely forgot to be sad, miserable, and bereaved.
He still thought of Tanya several times every day, but the memories no longer came at him in stunting, debilitating blows. They were cushioned by his general contentment.
If life wasn't as sweet and idyllic and rosy as it had once been, it was at least livable.
A little more than just livable—pleasantly livable.
The pleasantness was sometimes hampered by feelings of guilt, because the source of that pleasantness was his second wife. Each time his memory conjured up an image of Tanya's sweet face, he felt constrained to reassure it that she still had his love. Nothing would ever change that.
In his own defense he reminded himself that Tanya was dead and he was alive, and because she had loved him so unselfishly, she wouldn't want or expect him to deprive himself of life's pleasures.
Marcie made his life a pleasure.