Chapter Seven
She was going to lose it. Gennie cast a furious look at the clouds whipping in from the north, and swore. Damn, she was going to lose the light and she wasn't ready. The energy was pouring through her, flowing from her mind and heart to her hand in one of the rare moments an artist recognizes as right. Everything, everything told her that something lasting, something important would spring onto the canvas that morning; she had only to let herself go with it. But to go with it now, she had to race against the storm.
Gennie knew she had perhaps thirty minutes before the clouds would spoil her light, an hour before the rain closed out everything. Already a distant thunder rumbled over the sound of crashing waves. She cast a defiant look at the sky. By God, she would beat it yet!
The impetus was with her, an urgency that said today—it's going to happen today. Whatever she'd done before—the sketches, the preliminary work, the spread of paint on canvas—was just a preparation for what she would create today.
Excitement rippled across her skin with the wind. And a frustration. She seemed to need them both to draw from. Maybe a storm was brewing in her as well. It had seemed so since the night before when her mood had fluctuated and twisted, with Grant, without him. The last rejection had left her numb, ominously calm. Now her emotions were raging free again—fury, passion, pride, and torment. Gennie could pour them into her art, liberating them so that they wouldn't fester inside her.
Need him? No, she needed neither him nor anyone, she told herself as she streaked her brush over the canvas. Her work was enough to fill her life, cleanse her wounds. It was always fresh, always constant. As long as her eyes could see and her fingers could lift pencil or brush, it would be with her.
It had been her friend during her childhood, a solace during the pangs of adolescence. It was as demanding as a lover, and as greedy for her passion. And it was passion she felt now, a vibrant, physical passion that drove her forward. The moment was ripe, and the electricity in the air only added to the sense of urgency that shimmered inside her.
Now! it shouted at her. The time for merging, soul and heart and mind was now. If not now, it would be never. The clouds raced closer. She vowed to beat them.
Skin cool with anticipation, blood hot, Grant came outside. Like a wolf, he'd scented something in the air and had come in search of it. He'd been too restless to work, to tense too relax.
Something had been driving at him all morning, urging him to move, to look, to find. He'd told himself it was the approach of the storm, the lack of sleep. But he'd known, without understanding, that each of those things was only a part of the whole. Something was brewing, brewing in more than that cauldron of a sky.
He was hungry without wanting to eat, dissatisfied without knowing what he would change.
Restless, reckless, he'd fretted against the confines of his studio, all walls and glass. Instinct had led him out to seek the wind and the sea. And Gennie.
He'd known she'd be there, though he'd been convinced that he'd closed his mind to even the thought of her. But now, seeing her, he was struck, just as surely as the north sky was struck with the first silver thread of lightning.
He'd never seen her like this, but he'd known. She stood with her head thrown back in abandon to her work, her eyes glowing green with power. There was a wildness about her only partially due to the wind that swept up her hair and billowed the thin smock she wore. There was strength in the hand that guided the brush so fluidly and yet with such purpose. She might have been a queen overlooking her dominion. She might have been a woman waiting for a lover. As his blood quickened with need, Grant thought she was both.
Where was the woman who'd wept in his arms only hours before? Where was the fragility, the defenselessness that had terrified him? He'd given her what comfort he could, though he knew little of soothing tearful women. He'd spoken of things he hadn't said aloud in fifteen years—
because she'd needed to hear them and he, for some indefinable reason, had needed to say them.
And he'd left her because he'd felt himself being sucked into something unknown, and inevitable.
Now, she looked invulnerable, magnificent. This was a woman no man would ever resist, a woman who could choose and discard lovers with a single gesture. It wasn't fear he felt now, but challenge, and with the challenge a desire so huge it threatened to swallow him.
She stopped painting on a roll of thunder then looked up to the sky in a kind of exaltation. He heard her laugh, once, with an arousing defiance that had him struggling with a fresh slap of desire.
Who in God's name was she? he demanded. And why, in heaven and hell, couldn't he stay away?
The excitement that had driven her to finish the painting lingered. It was done, Gennie thought with a breathless triumph. And yet… there was something more. Her passion hadn't been diffused by the consummation of woman and art, but spun in her still; restless, waiting.
Then she saw him, with the sea and the storm at his back. The wind blew wilder. Her blood pounded with it. For a long moment they only stared at each other while thunder and lightning inched closer.
Ignoring him, and the flash of heat that demanded she close the distance between them, Gennie turned back to the canvas. This and only this was what called to her, she told herself. This and only this was what she needed.
Grant watched her pack her paints and brushes. There was something both regal and defiant about the way she had turned her back on him and gone about her business. Yet there was no denying that jolt of recognition he had felt when their gazes had locked. Under his feet the ground shook with the next roll of thunder. He went to her.
The light shifted, dimming as clouds rolled over the sun. The air was so charged, sparks could be felt along the skin. Gennie packed up her gear with deft, steady hands. She'd beaten the storm that morning. She could beat anything.
"Genvieve." She wasn't Gennie now. He'd seen Gennie in the churchyard, laughing with young, fresh delight. It had been Gennie who had clung to him, weeping. This woman's laugh would be low and seductive, and she would shed no tears at all. Whichever, whoever she was, Grant was drawn to her, irrevocably.
"Grant." Gennie closed the lid on her paint case before she turned. "You're out early."
"You've finished."
"Yes." The wind blew his hair wildly around his face, and while the face was set, his eyes were dark and restless. Gennie knew her own emotions matched his like two halves of the same coin.
"I've finished."
"You'll go now." He could see the flush of triumph on her face and the moody, unpredictable green of her eyes.
"From here?" She tossed her head as her gaze shifted to the sea. The waves were swelling higher, and no boat dared test them now. "Yes. I have other things I want to paint."
It was what he wanted. Hadn't he wanted to be rid of her from the very first? But Grant said nothing as the grumbling thunder rolled closer.
"You'll have your solitude back." Gennie's smile was light and mocking. "That's what's most important to you, isn't it? And I've gotten what I needed here."
His eyes narrowed, but he wasn't certain of the origin of his temper. "Have you?"
"Have a look," she invited with a gesture of her hand.
He hadn't wanted to see the painting, had deliberately avoided even a glance at it. Now her eyes dared him and the flick of her wrist was too insolent to deny. Hooking his thumbs in his pockets, Grant turned toward the canvas.
She saw too much of what he needed there, what he felt. The power of limitless sea, the glory of space and unending challenge. She'd scorned muted colors and had chosen bold. She'd forsaken delicacy for muscle. What had been a blank canvas was now as full of force as the turbulent Atlantic, and as full of secrets. The secrets there were nature's, as the strength and solidity of the
lighthouse were man's. She'd captured both, pitting them against each other even while showing their timeless harmony.
The painting moved him, disturbed him, pulled at him, as much as its creator.
Gennie felt the tension build up at the base of her neck as Grant only frowned at the painting.
She knew it was everything she'd wanted it to be, felt it was perhaps the best work she'd ever done. But it was his—his world, his force, his secrets that had dominated the emotions she'd felt when she'd painted it. Even as she'd finished, the painting had stopped being hers and had become his.
Grant took a step away from the painting and looked out to sea. The lightning was closer; he saw it shimmer dangerously behind the dark, angry clouds. He seemed to have lost the words, the phrases that had always come so easily to him. He couldn't think of anything but her, and the need that had risen up to work knots in his stomach. "It's fine," he said flatly.
He could have struck her and hurt her no less. Her small gasp was covered by the moan of the wind. For a moment Gennie stared at his back while pain rocketed through her. Rejection…
would she never stop setting herself up for his rejection?
Pain altered to anger in the space of seconds. She didn't need his approval, his pleasure, his understanding. She had everything she needed within herself. In raging silence she slipped the canvas into its carrying case, then folded her easel. Gathering her things together, she turned toward him slowly.
"Before I go, I'd like to tell you something." Her voice was cool over flowing vowels. "It isn't often one finds one's first impression was so killingly accurate. The first night I met you, I thought you were a rude, arrogant man with no redeeming qualities." The wind blew her hair across her eyes and with a toss of her head she sent it flying back so that she could keep her icy gaze on his. "It's very gratifying to learn just how right I was… and to be able to dislike you so intensely." Chin high, Gennie turned and walked to her car.
She jerked up the trunk of her car and put her equipment and canvas in, perversely glad to flow with the fury that consumed her. When Grant's hand closed over her arm, she slammed the trunk closed and whirled around, ready to battle on any terms, any grounds. Blind with her own emotions, she didn't notice the heat in his eyes or the raggedness of his breathing.
"Do you think I'm just going to let you walk away?" he demanded. "Do you think you can walk into my life and take and not leave anything behind?"
Her chest was heaving, her eyes brilliant. With calculated disdain, she looked down at the ringers that circled her arm. "Take your hand off me," she told him, spacing her words with insolent precision.
Lightning shot across the sky as they stared at each other, cold white heat against boiling gray and angry purple. The deafening roar of thunder drowned out Grant's oath. The moment stood poised, crackling, then swirled like the wind that screamed in triumph.
"You should have taken my advice," he said between his teeth, "and stuck with your counts and barons." Then he was pulling her across the tough grass, against the wind.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"What I should have done the minute you barged into my life."
Murder? Gennie stared at the cliffs and the raging sea below. God knew he looked ready for it at that moment—and perhaps he would have liked her to believe he was capable of tossing her over the edge. But she knew what the violence in him meant, where it would lead them both. She fought him wildly as he pulled her toward the lighthouse.
"You must be mad! Let me go!"
"I must be," he agreed tightly. Lightning forked again, opening the sky. Rain spewed out.
"I said take your hands off me!"
He whirled to her then, his face sculptured and shadowed in the crazed light of the storm. "It's too late for that!" he shouted at her. "Damn it, you know it as well as I do. It was too late from the first minute." Rain poured over them, pounding and warm.
"I won't be dragged into your bed, do you hear me!" She grabbed his soaking shirt with her free hand while her body vibrated with fury and with wanting. "I won't be dragged anywhere. Do you think you can just suddenly decide you need a lover and haul me off?"
His breath was raging in and out of his lungs. The rain pouring down his face only accented the passionate darkness of his eyes. She was sleek and wet. A siren? Maybe she was, but he'd already wrecked on the reef. "Not any lover." He swung her against him so that their wet clothes fused then seemed to melt away. "You. Damn it, Gennie, you know it's you."
Their faces were close, their eyes locked. Each had forgotten the storm around them as the tempest within took over. Heart pounded against heart. Need pounded against need. Full of fear and triumph, she threw her head back. "Show me."
Grant crushed her closer so that not even the wind could have forced its way between. "Here," he said roughly. "By God, here and now."
His mouth took hers madly, and she answered. Unleashed, the passion drove them far past sanity, beyond the civilized and into the dark tunnel of chaotic desire. His lips sped across her face, seeking to devour all that could be consumed and more. When his teeth scraped over the cord of her neck, Gennie moaned and drew him with her to the ground.
Raw, keening wind, hard, driving rain, the pound and crash of the stormy sea. They were nothing in the face of this tempest. Grant forgot them as he pressed against her, feeling every line and curve as though he'd already torn the clothes from her. Her heart pounded. It seemed as if it had worked its way inside his chest to merge with his.
Her body felt like a furnace. He hadn't known there could be such heat from a living thing. But alive she was, moving under him, hands seeking, mouth greedy. The rain sluicing over them should have cooled the fire, yet it stoked it higher so that the water might have sizzled on contact.
He knew only greed, only ageless need and primitive urges. She'd bewitched him from the first instant, and now, at last, he succumbed. Her hands were in his hair, bringing his mouth back to hers again and again so that her lips could leave him breathless, arouse more hunger.
They rolled on the wet grass until she was on top of him, her mouth ravaging his with a strength and power only he could match. In a frenzy, she dragged at his shirt, yanking and tugging until it was over his head and discarded. With a long, low moan she ran her hands over him. Grant's reason shattered.
Roughly, he pushed her on her back, cutting off her breath as lightning burst overhead. Ignoring buttons, he pulled the blouse from her, desperate to touch what he had denied himself for days.
His hands slid over her wet skin, kneading, possessing, hurrying in his greed for more. And when she arched against him, agile and demanding, he buried his mouth at her breast and lost himself.
He tasted the rain on her, laced with summer thunder and her own night scent. Like a drowning man he clung to her as he sank beneath the depths. He knew what it was to want a woman, but not like this. Desire could be controlled, channeled, guided. So what was it that pounded in him?
His fingers bruised her, but he was unaware in his desperation to take all and take it quickly.
When he dragged the jeans down her hips, he felt both arousal and frustration as they clung to her skin and those smooth, narrow curves. Struggling with the wet denim, he followed its inching progress with his mouth, thrilling as Gennie arched and moaned. His teeth scraped over her hip, down her thigh to the inside of her knee as he pulled the jeans down her, then left them in a heap.
Mindlessly, he plunged his tongue into her and heard her cry out with the wind. Heat suffused him. Rain fell on his back unfelt, ran from his hair onto her skin but did nothing to wash away the passion that drove them both closer and closer to the peak.
Then they were both fighting with his jeans, hands tangling together while their lips fused again.
The sounds coming low from her throat might have been his name or some new spell she was weaving over him. He no longer cared.
Lightning illuminated her face once, brilliantly—the slash of cheekbone, the eyes slanted and nearly closed, the soft full lips parted and trembling with her breathing. At that moment she was witch, and he, willingly bewitched.
With his mouth against the hammering pulse in her throat, he plunged into her, taking her with a violent kind of worship he didn't understand. When she stiffened and cried out, Grant struggled to find both his sanity and the reason. Then she was wrapped around him drawing him into the satin-coated darkness.
Breathless, dazed, empty, Grant lay with his face buried in Gennie's hair. The rain still fell, but until that moment he didn't realize that it had lost its force. The storm was passed, consumed by itself like all things of passion. He felt the hammer-trip beat of her heart beneath him, and her trembles. Shutting his eyes, he tried to gather his strength and the control that meant lucidity.
"Oh, God." His voice was rough and raw. The apology wouldn't come; he thought it less than useless. "Why didn't you tell me?" he murmured as he rolled from her to lie on his back against the wet grass. "Damn it, Gennie, why didn't you tell me?"
She kept her eyes closed so that the rain fell on her lids, over her face and throbbing body. Was this how it was supposed to be? she wondered. Should she feel so spent, so enervated while her skin hummed everywhere, everywhere his hand had touched it? Should she feel as though every lock she had, had been bro ken? By whom, him or her, it didn't matter. But her privacy was gone, and the need for it. Yet now, hearing the harsh question—accusation?—she felt a ripple of pain sharper than the loss of innocence. She said nothing.
"Gennie, you let me think you were—"
"What?" she demanded, opening her eyes. The clouds were still dark, she saw, but the lightning was gone.
Cursing himself, Grant dragged a hand through his hair. "Gennie, you should have told me you hadn't been with a man before." And how was it possible, he wondered, that she'd let no man touch her before? That he was the first… the only.
"Why?" she said flatly, wishing he would go, wishing she had the strength to leave. "It was my business."
Swearing, he shifted, leaning over her. His eyes were dark and angry, but when she tried to pull away, he pinned her. "I don't have much gentleness," he told her, and the words were unsteady with feeling. "But I would have used all I had, I would have tried to find more, for you." When she only stared at him, Grant lowered his forehead to hers. "Gennie…"
Her doubts, her fears, melted at that one softly murmured word. "I wasn't looking for gentleness then," she whispered. Framing his face with her hands, she lifted it. "But now…" She smiled, and watched the frown fade from his eyes.
He dropped a kiss on her lips, soft, more like a whisper, then rising, lifted her into his arms.
Gennie laughed at the feeling of weightlessness and ease. "What're you doing now?"
"Taking you inside so you can warm up, dry off, and make love with me again—maybe not in that order."
Gennie curled her arms around his neck. "I'm beginning to like your ideas. What about our clothes?"
"We can salvage what's left of them later." He pushed open the door of the lighthouse. "We won't be needing them for quite a while."
"Definitely liking your ideas." She pressed her mouth against his throat. "Are you really going to carry me up those stairs?"
"Yeah."
Gennie cast a look at the winding staircase and tightened her hold. "I'd just like to mention it wouldn't be terribly romantic if you were to trip and drop me."
"The woman casts aspersions on my machismo."
"On your balance," she corrected as he started up. She shivered as her wet skin began to chill, then abruptly laughed. "Grant, did it occur to you what those assorted piles of clothes would look like if someone happened by?"
"They'd probably look a great deal like what they are," he considered. "And it should discourage anyone from trespassing. I should have thought of it before—much better than a killer-dog sign."
She sighed, partially from relief as they reached the landing. "You're hopeless. Anyone would think you were Clark Kent."
Grant stopped in the doorway to the bathroom to stare at her. "Come again?"
"You know, concealing a secret identity. Though you're anything but mild-mannered," she added as she toyed with a damp curl that hung over his ear. "You've set up this lighthouse as some kind of Fortress of Solitude."
The long intense look continued. "What was Clark Kent's Earth mother's name?"
"Is this a quiz?"
"Do you know?"
She arched a brow because his eyes were so suddenly serious. "Martha."
"I'll be damned," he murmured. He laughed, then gave her a quick kiss that was puzzlingly friendly considering they were naked and pressed together. "You continue to surprise me, Genvieve. I think I'm crazy about you."
The light words went straight to her heart and turned it over. "Because I know Superman's adoptive mother's first name?"
Grant nuzzled his cheek against her, the first wholly sweet gesture she'd ever seen in him. In that one instant she was lost, as she'd never been lost before. "For one thing." Feeling her tremble, Grant drew her closer. "Come on, into the shower; you're freezing."
He stepped into the tub before he set her down, then still holding her close, pressed his mouth to hers in a long, lingering kiss. With the storm, with the passion, she'd felt invulnerable. Now, no longer innocent, no longer unaware, the nerves returned. Only a short time before she had given herself to him, perhaps demanded that he take her, but now she could only cling while her mind reeled with the wonder of it. When the water came on full and hot, she jolted, gasping. With a low laugh, Grant stroked a hand intimately over her hip. "Feel good?"
It did, after the initial shock, but Gennie tilted back her head and eyed him narrowly. "You might have warned me."
"Life's full of surprises."
Like falling in love, she thought, when you hadn't the least intention of doing so. Gennie smiled, finding her arms had wound around his neck.
"You know…" He traced his tongue lightly over her mouth. "I'm getting used to the taste—and the feel of you wet. It's tempting just to stay right here for the next couple of hours."
She nuzzled against him when he ran his hands down her back. Strong hands, toughened in contrast to the elegance of their shape. There were no others she could ever imagine touching her.
With the steam rising around him, and Gennie soft and giving in his arms, Grant felt that rushing, heady desire building again. His muscles contracted with it—tightening, preparing.
"No, not this time," he murmured, pressing his mouth to her throat. This time he would remember her fragility and the wonder of being the only man to ever possess her. Whatever tenderness he had, or could find in himself, would be for her.
"You should dry off." He nibbled lightly at her lips before he drew her away. She was smiling, but her eyes were uncertain. As he turned off the water he tried to ignore the very real fear her vulnerability brought to him. Taking a towel from the rack, he stroked it over her face. "Here, lift your arms."
She did, laying her hands on his shoulders as he wrapped the towel around her. Slowly, running soft, undemanding kisses over her face, he drew the towel together to knot it loosely at her breasts. Gennie closed her eyes, the better to soak up the sensation of being pampered.
Using a fresh towel, Grant began to dry her hair. Gently, lazily, while her heart began to race, he rubbed the towel over it. "Warm?" he murmured, dipping his head to nibble at her ear. "You're trembling."
How could she answer when her heart was hammering in her throat? Heat was creeping into her, yet her body shivered with anticipation, uncertainties, longings. He had only to touch his mouth to hers to know that for that moment, for always, she was his.
"I want you," he said softly. "I wanted you right from the start." He skimmed his tongue over her ear. "You knew that."
"Yes." The word came out breathlessly, like a sigh.
"Do you know how much more I want you now than I did even an hour ago?" His mouth covered hers before she could answer. "Come to bed, Gennie."
He didn't carry her, but took her hand so that they could walk together into the thin gray light of his room. Her pulses pounded. The first time there had been no thought, no doubts. Desire had ruled her and the power had flowed. Now her mind was clear and her nerves jumping. She knew now where he could take her with a touch, with a taste. The journey was as much feared as it was craved.
"Grant—"
But he barely touched her, only cupping her face as they stood beside the bed. "You're beautiful." His eyes were on hers, intense, searching. ' "The first time I saw you, you took my breath away. You still do."
As moved by the long look and soft words as she had been by the tempestuous kisses, she reached up to take his wrists. "I don't need the words unless you want to give them. I just want to be with you."
"Whatever I tell you will be the truth, or I won't tell you at all." He leaned toward her, touching his mouth to hers, but nibbling only, testing the softness, lingering over that honey-steeped taste.
As he took her deep with tenderness, his fingers moved over her face, skimming, stroking.
Gennie's head went light while her body grew heavy. She barely felt the movement when they lowered to the bed.
Then it seemed she felt everything—the tiny nubs in the bedspread, the not quite smooth, not quite rough texture of Grant's palms, the thin mat of hair on his chest. All, she felt them all, as if her skin had suddenly become as soft and sensitive as a newborn's. And he treated her as though she were that precious with the slow, whisper-light kisses he brushed over her face and the hands that touched her—arousing, but stopping just short of demand.
The floating weightlessness she had experienced in the churchyard drifted back over her, but now, with the shivering excitement of knowledge. Aware of where they could lead each other, Gennie sighed. This time the journey would be luxurious, lazy and loving.
The light through the window was thin, misty gray from the clouds that still hid the sun. It cast shadows and mysteries. She could hear the sea—not the deafening, titanic roar, but the echo and the promise of power. And when he murmured to her, it was like the sea, with its passionate pull and thrust. The urgency she had felt before had become a quiet enjoyment. Though the needs were no less, there was a comfort here, an unquestioning trust she'd never expected to feel. He would protect if she needed him, cherish in his own fashion. Beneath the demands and impatience was a man who would give unselfishly where he cared. Discovering that was discovering everything.
Touch me—don't ever stop touching me. And he seemed to hear her silent request as he caressed, lingered, explored. The pleasure was liquid and light, like a lazy river, like rain misting. Her mind was so clouded with him, only him, she no longer thought of her body as separate, but a part of the two that made one whole.
Soft murmurs and quiet sighs, the warmth that only flesh can bring to flesh. Gennie learned of him—the man he showed so rarely to anyone. Sensitivity, because it was not his way, was all the sweeter. Gentleness, so deeply submerged, was all the more arousing.
She hardly knew when her pliancy began to kindle to excitement. But he did. The subtle change in her movements, her breathing, had a shiver of pleasure darting down his spine. And he drew yet more pleasure in the mere watching of her face in the gloomy light. A flicker of passion reminded him that no one had ever touched her as he did. And no one would. For so long he'd taken such care not to allow anyone to get too close, to block off any feelings of possession, to avoid being possessed. Though the proprietary sensation disturbed him, he couldn't fight it. She was his. Grant told himself it didn't yet mean he was hers. Yet he could think of no one else.
He ran kisses over her slowly, until his mouth brushed then loitered at her shoulder. And when he felt her yield, completely, unquestioningly, he took her once, gasping, to the edge. On her moan, he pressed his lips to hers, wanting to feel the sound as well as hear it.
Mindless, boneless, burning, Gennie moved with him, responding to the agonizingly slow pace by instinct alone. She wanted to rush, she wanted to stay in that cloudy world of dreams forever.
Now, and only now, did she fully understand why the coming together of two separate beings was called making love.
She opened to him, offering everything. When he slipped inside her she felt his shudder, heard the groan that was muffled against her throat. His breath rasped against her ear but he kept the pace exquisitely slow. There couldn't be so much—she'd never known there could be—but he showed her.
She drifted down a tunnel with soft melting edges. Deeper and lusher it grew until her whole existence was bound there in the velvet heat that promised forever. Reason peeled away layer by layer so that her body was guided by senses alone. He was trembling—was she? As her hands glided over his shoulders she could feel the hard, tense muscles there while his movements were gentle and easy. Through the mists of pleasure she knew he was blocking off his own needs for hers. A wave of emotion struck her that was a hundred times greater than passion.
"Grant." His name was only a whisper as her arms tightened around him. "Now. Take me now."
"Gennie." He lifted his face so that she had a glimpse of dark, dark eyes before his mouth met hers. His control seemed to snap at the contact and he swallowed her gasps as he rushed with her to the peak.
There were no more thoughts nor the need for any.